This morning Morton Bagot hosted a Marsh Harrier and a Red Kite, and I wasn't there to see them. The lucky guy was Mark Islip, but apart from the fact he saw them at 8.30 (per John Yardley, who is currently in Wales) I don't know any other details.
What I do know is that there are three types of dipping. In ascending order of pain they are:
1. You are at work or on holiday and hear about a bird on your patch, but can do nothing about it until you get home. This only really hurts if you are away for a week and the bird stays for about four days.
2. You are on site but the bird flies through and is seen by someone else, e.g Common Tern last week. Only really upsetting if the bird in question was a Bee-eater or something else that you know will never occur again.
3. You were planning to go this morning, but at the last minute change your plans. This is what happened to me this morning. My reason for not going? It was raining. How pathetic.
Instead, after emerging from the doctor's surgery with the text from John burning a hole in my coat pocket, I decided to stick to my secondary plan which was to call in at Haselor scrape and then go and survey Morton Bagot from the road after the rain had stopped in the lame hope that either birds would still be there. They weren't, but at least I ticked a new local birder, Keith Fletcher, at Haselor Scrape. He had been watching three Redshank chicks, but only one remained for me to see.
The Marsh Harrier was the second for the site, the previous one (which I did see) was an adult male in April 2011.
Congratulations to Mark for a terrific find.
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