Wednesday June 1 - Its a numbers game

Until about the middle of this morning I was resigned to not producing a blog post until the end of the week, but then everything changed.

So, yesterday I had been pottering around Umberslade Park seeing not very much, when I bumped into Jim Winsper. To cut a long story short he arranged for me to join the Earlswood Birds whatsapp group, which I thought might be handy if anything turned up there. I have found myself placed in two groups; Earlswood Bird News, and Birds and Banter. These aren't exactly the names of the groups but it's something like that.

Anyway, this morning the "banter" included news of a White-tailed Plover at Sandwell Valley. My attitude to twitching these days is that the bird needs to be a pretty big carrot to get me out of my routine. A White-tailed Plover is about as big as they come. The first British record was at Packington Gravel Pit in 1975, so even I'm not old enough to have seen it. Since then there have been fewer than ten British records, and another one in the West Midlands seemed very unlikely.

It turned out to be the most train-spotty of twitches. The hard part was negotiating the road system to get me to the venue. Once there, it was stroll up, tap the nearest birder on the shoulder (Graham Mant as it turned out), and peer through his scope. Job done. Guys with big lenses were no doubt getting some excellent shots. I, on the other hand, had to settle for some pretty ropey distant shots (very Morton Bagotish).

It's in there somewhere

White-tailed Plover - a bit out of focus due to the reeds.

The whole time I was there, admittedly just half an hour, it did absolutely nothing. It was still an impressive bird, but if I'm honest it was all about the tick. As it happens it was my 300th West Midlands bird, and according to the BUBO website for dedicated twitchers (i.e. not me any more) it was my 438th British tick. Ironically my own list makes it 439, but I've probably overlooked a species which is no longer a species. Taxonomists are constantly changing the goalposts and it's hard to keep up, or care that much.

Back to the Circle. My Umberslade Park visit contained proof, if it was needed, that for the journeyman birder spring has moved on. Nearly everything has got to where it wants to be and is settling down to the important business of producing the next generation. I saw Blackcaps carrying food, and fledgling Treecreepers, Nuthatches, Long-tailed Tits etc. The bread and butter of birding.

Juvenile Treecreeper

Irritated Blackcap

I'll be putting the moth-trap out tonight as the temperature is on the up. An extension to this post is likely.... and here it is:

16 moths in total including six new for the year as follows; Buff-tip (4), Common Marbled Carpet, Setaceous Hebrew Character, Buff Ermine (2), Turnip Moth, and Ingrailed Clay.

Buff Ermine

It was a little colder overnight than I had expected, resulting in a modest catch.