This morning I was joined by Dave at Morton Bagot and we set off the see whether any of Friday's treats were still present. To the best of my knowledge neither the Ring Ouzels nor the Garganey were seen yesterday. Meanwhile the rest of the Midlands was knee-deep in Little Gulls, including two at Arrow Valley Lake seen by Mark Islip, while Matt Griffiths was seeing a couple of Arctic Skuas over Earlswood (the first ever Skuas there or anywhere else within my Circular patch).
It didn't take long before we started to get lucky. A "Curlew" I saw briefly in flight turned out to be the first Whimbrel for the patch since 2013. It landed in the field which had held the Ring Ouzels two days ago and showed well before heading for the flash field (without being flushed by us I may add).
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| Whimbrel |
At exactly the same time we could hear a Grasshopper Warbler reeling from the hedge-line. We were keen to check whether the Whimbrel had landed so made no serious attempt to see it.
At the flash field we scanned, and quickly located the Garganey in exactly the same place as it had been on Friday. I would have photographed it, but our morning was hi-jacked by a Teal sleeping in the grass. It appeared to have a white vertical stripe down the side of its breast, but I wasn't certain whether it was the edge of the breast, often pale in drake Teal, playing tricks on us. It was so far away it was hard to work out which way it was facing.
We decided to head along the footpath towards the church and look back, hoping for a different perspective. This plan at least enabled us to relocate the Whimbrel which had chosen to occupy a part of the field invisible from the viewpoint. We couldn't see the Teal at all, so we returned to the viewpoint and continued to watch it. I tried to get some shots. Surely this was a Green-winged Teal.
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| It's not the obvious Teal, it's the blob to its left. |
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| Zooming in. Looks like a Green-winged Teal to me, but is it really? |
I took loads of photos hoping one of them might reveal a little more. Eventually we could see that the white stripe was visible (just) on both sides of its chest (but is it the chest)? So not a blade of grass.
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| It's the blob to the left of the drake Teal |
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| Another shocking photo |
At this point we made a very bad decision. Instead of continuing to wait for it to move (or do something!) we decided to try to find a better viewing position. The flash field is out of bounds, so going into it was not an option.
After failing to get any views at all, we returned to find...an empty patch of grass. An hour later we couldn't even see the Garganey any more, and the seven Eurasian Teals we could see swam up and down without ever giving the impression of being anything else.
The annoying thing is that it could still be there, or it may have flown off while we were wasting our time.
One other bird to mention was a Little Ringed Plover which appeared at the edge of the same distant flash.
So at time of writing this we have gone from the elation of finding the Whimbrel, to the frustration of barely getting good enough views to clinch the Green-winged Teal and then losing it completely.
I'm having it though.....or am I? I've been down again this evening and there was no sign. I am also starting to worry about whether there is enough evidence that the identification is sound.
Specifically I'm concerned that the bird might be back-on with the grass covering its rear end. If that were the case, the apparent white breast streak might actually be the flank streak seen from the rear. Dave was counselling caution, and I think I should have listened to him.
Finally a bit of late news. John Chidwick heard two singing Grasshopper Warblers this evening.
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