Wednesday October 10

Guess what. I'm on holiday. We are staying in a very nice holiday property in the middle of Cornwall, i.e. not where the birds are. The locality is Vose Farm near Tregony.

We came here in 2016, and I have to admit that part of the attraction was my determination to visit Dodman Point, a headland which juts out into the English Channel but which is rarely featured even on the Cornish Birds website. Surely an under-watched gem.

This time I managed to negotiate the narrow, high-banked roads to get to the National Trust car-park at its stem. It was largely cloudy on Monday but I spent a pleasant couple of hours there looking for migrants. The final tally was two Chiffchaffs, two Blackcaps, and a Wheatear. Oh well, at least I've been.

Wheatear

Meanwhile, Vose Farm has had its moments. The day after we arrived was a cold Sunday morning, and I found about 40 Swallows and a House Martin perched on wires, while a couple of Stonechats were visible just beyond the end of the garden. They evidently all migrated during the day, because not a single one has been seen since.

I couldn't fit the moth-trap into the car, so my only chance of moths came from the porch, which had an outside light. And as it turned out the single moth present on Monday morning was a Feathered Ranunculus, a coastal species which is virtually unknown in the Midlands (just two Warwickshire records).

Feathered Ranunculus

I should probably own up to the fact that I didn't know what it was, and tentatively identified it as a Brindled Green, only to be corrected by a couple of members of the Warwickshire Moth Facebook Group.

The following night I found five micros which were new to me; Eudonia angustea, but I am aware that they are quite common, even in the Midlands.

Yesterday Lyn and I went to west Cornwall to visit galleries. This included a stop at Mousehole where we witnessed a highly entertaining drama which involved a young chap being transported across to a rocky outcrop where he had lost a newly purchased £1.5k drone with which he had been filming seabirds when one of them took exception to it and brought it down.

The recovery mission in full swing

We had to leave before we found out what happened, but I have since discovered that he did find it and that it still works. While we were watching the drama, we saw a Peregrine making an unsuccessful swoop at a Turnstone.

Today, a trip to Trelissick Gardens was very pleasant. More importantly I had spotted that the venue was only ten miles from Devoran Quay which has held a Lesser Yellowlegs for about three weeks. So I arrived at 16.45 to find the tide rising rapidly. Fortunately the second group of Redshank I looked at were accompanied by the Lesser Yellowlegs. Less fortunately they were on the opposite side of the creek, so I was only able to snatch a few distant shots (the sun was against me too).

Lesser Yellowlegs (with Black-tailed Godwits in the foreground)

All the waders were then flushed by a man on the far bank and flew downstream, but they chose to land even further away so no better shots were possible. I think this is only the third Lesser Yellowlegs I have seen in the UK.

Its nice to end with a rarity. The forecast for the next couple of days is pretty ropey, so I doubt I'll be seeing anything else before we head home.