Anyone else like to share their birdy high/low points of the year so far?? You must have some!? I can think of an obvious contender....
Ah g-wan g-wan g-wan g-wan ... |=)|
Ok, ok - I was going to, honest, but with a couple of weeks to the end of the year yet I was leaving room for the long-staying drake
King Eider to bob up in front of me and be my highlight. Your, erm, gentle prodding has persuaded me to get on with it though....
Funny year, really. Loads of cracking birds, for sure, and best year ever for the patch in terms of quality and quantity, no doubt. But, there is a 'but'. Which I'll come to later. In the meantime, I think the biggest buzz for me was being part of the
Audouin's event. That was a truly unreal experience! I couldn't have been more gobsmacked if a
Houbara Bustard had been striding about on the marsh. Other highlights? Like Bun, I thought the
Little Terns were great; a Beer Head fly-past
Cuckoo being mobbed by a
Pied Wag was a real surprise; 54
Balearics in flocks of up to 14 on 20th September was superb seawatching; all the white-winged gulls (6
Iceland and 2
Glaucous for me) were superb; the fantastic vis-mig of 30th October (more than 26,000 birds of 23 species) was unforgettable; the
Bonaparte's Gull was lovely; the
Caspian Gull and
Iberian Chiff were both rare AND educational (and ticks!). There are loads of other great highlights too -
Pec Sand, seeing
Little Stint in the hand, drake
Garganey,
Stone Curlew, finally (sort of) getting the hang of digiscoping, etc etc.....
So, what's the 'but'? It is this: I think this year has produced more frustrations than I can ever recall in a year's birding. Firstly (and on a very personal level) the gut-wrenching dips:
Black Stork had my optics on E-Bay the very next day. Simply the pits. Shall I go on? Ok.
Bearded Tit was very irritating,
Pallas's Warbler annoying,
Laughing Gull horrible,
Corncrake depressing (though the company was great, folks |=)| ). Some of my much-treasured patch ticks were so brief and unsatisfying as to be virtually subliminal -
Lapland Bunting,
Puffin,
Blue-headed Wagtail,
Hen Harrier. In 2006 we had the
Alpine Swifts. Spectacular, rare, stuck around for ages, everybody goes home grinning. Nothing quite like that this year, despite the superb roll-call. Too many, er, flying visits. If the
Audouin's (or the
Black Stork, say) had settled in for a week's concentrated crowd-pleasing I would feel very different about 2007.
Summing up 2007. To paraphrase something some bloke once said:
'Never before, in the field of local patch birding, has so much good stuff been seen so briefly by so few'.
Next year I would like some amazing, stonkingly spectacular mega-rare bird to pop up right in front of me, fry my head, and stay for a month.....
