July 2025. Turtle Dove at Fingringhoe Wick

July was mainly a month of insects. Golden-Ringed Dragonfly at Powerstock Common, Scarlet Darter at Silverlake, Purple Emperor at Hatfield Forest. Enormous numbers of Silver-Washed Fritillary. Some birds did sneak in; Nightjars in Weeting Forest, then towards the end of the month Spotted Redshanks at Old Hall Marshes, Pectoral Sandpiper at Abberton, and even a Night Heron at Rye Meads. But pride of place goes to at least 3 Turtle Doves at Fingringhoe Wick. 

A number of explanations as to why the Turtle Dove population has collapsed have been advanced; Muntjac deer eating undergrowth. Agricultural changes removing areas of seed. But surely the obvious one is the mass shooting of Turtle Doves on spring migration. And now a moratorium of sorts is in operation, the numbers are slowly recovering.

A comment on X about how the Turtle Doves sing and display to each other put in my mind the notion that the dove is a colony breeder; not a tight colony, but a loose colony of spaced out pairs. Hence the decline has left a handful of scattered colonies. As numbers increase what seems to be happening is these colonies get more birds, rather than more colonies being established. So our local outpost at Fingringhoe Wick saw possibly up to five Turtle Doves singing this year. An impressive number, and for us on 14th July an impressive sound to be stood in the centre of purring Doves and to see one in a clearing on a branch singing away. Fingers crossed this recovery has legs and we see the population of this gorgeous bird spreading its wings. 

Waxham. A ghost from the past.

A hire car as my normal ride is awaiting a new part. Not much around locally. So why not do the 100 miles plus to Waxham and tick that nailed-on Glaucous Gull? Just me and Dave as Mike was unavailable.

I suspect I'm not the only birder who hasn't seen a Glaucous Gull for a while. As a young birder in Yorkshire they were a regular feature of coastal or reservoir visit but never so common as to be taken for granted*. These northern brutes, distinctive and intimidating, seemed to me to bring marauding Viking spirits with them when they came.

We eventually found a parking slot near Sea Palling and started the long walk down to groyne 24, and as we went it became clear why the gulls were there. I am possibly the last person to know this, but the beach is host to vast numbers of seals many of which were hauled up relaxing along the sand close to the concrete wall and walkway. What a sight! And what a smell!

What wasn't there was a white-winged gull. We spent an hour or so enjoying the sight of the seals and failing to see the target gull, then headed back happy with our seal spectacular but disappointed not to renew our acquaintance with Larus hyperboreus . Half way back to the beach car park I glanced up and there passing close overhead was the unmistakable ghostly white bulk of a second-year Glaucous Gull. I got the binoculars on it for a moment before it disappeared behind the dunes, and then a tense ten minutes scanning back towards the gull site trying to get a view for David before we found it on top of a large post. What a bird! The enormous beak, sheer bulk and fierce expression clear. I found in the days when I would see them more regularly that although there is an overlap of considerable difficulty, in general an Iceland Gull looks like it wants to be your friend and a Glaucous Gull looks like it wants to kill you.

That was more or less it. About 20 Common Scoter on an otherwise barren sea, and a couple of Cattle Egrets in a field. Then back. 

* 1975 Yorkshire Bird Report. 'An outstanding year for this species', 'In the Scarborough area many sightings of one, two, or three birds in the early months. At least nine individuals were involved' Also up to four individual Iceland Gulls in the Scarborough area.'

Black Redstart, and the history of humanity.

After two weeks of solitary birding in Weymouth I left the scope at home and went for a walk with Mrs D and dog round Weymouth. We took a route that fortuitously went past the Nothe Fort. The rocks along the shore are a traditional site for Black Redstart so it wasn't a big surprise to see a jet-black ball of fluff on a rock. We took some time to enjoy a male in his glory flitting around the rocks. Always a highlight to see one of these. But that was it birding wise, so ....

My last blog took a journey down global warming. This one may also take a journey but probably a look at evolution of birds and people. I'm not sure where yet.

But we can start with Humans and ants. For those who haven't seen it, the series Human presented by Ella Al-Shamahi is excellent. There are lots of hominid remains going back hundreds of thousands of years being found all over the world, including hominid foot-prints found fleetingly on Happisburgh beach. But none of these have direct human descendants. Current analysis from the Y-chromosome indicates an origin of all humans alive today about 250,000 years ago in Africa.

A visiting space alien popping in every ten thousand years and reporting back on their student project would have an interesting set of reports. The first 15 reports would consist of a social ape wandering around Africa. The next four reports would note ultimately unsuccessful efforts to leave Africa. Then a series of reports would show homo sapiens working their way round the coastal stretches of the pacific and Indian oceans, then a report noting about maybe 10 million humans maximum with some primitive signs of buildings, language, maybe some writing, then the next report has a population of 8 billion who have split the atom and gone to the moon.

Something seems very odd about this. If we take ants, they have complex social behaviours, live in cities, have social roles etc. There's an excellent essay on ants here written partly by my smarter brother. My guess is that ants behaved like this pretty much out of the evolutionary box, with their societal and role developments being a result of evolutionary pressures, and if we returned in one hundred thousand years they would be pretty much the same. They wouldn't have gone to the moon. Most creatures have their form and behaviour developed as a result of evolutionary forces and don't seem to change much when they find their niche. We humans don't. 

The ant article quotes an interesting aspect of human evolution evidenced by Cortez meeting the Aztecs in Mexico.

"What took place in the early 1500s was truly exceptional, something that had never happened before and never will again. Two cultural experiments, running in isolation for 15,000 years or more, at last came face to face. Amazingly, after all that time, each could recognize the other’s institutions. When Cortés landed in Mexico he found roads, canals, cities, palaces, schools, law courts, markets, irrigation works, kings, priests, temples, peasants, artisans, armies, astronomers, merchants, sports, theatre, art, music, and books. High civilization, differing in detail but alike in essentials, had evolved independently on both sides of the earth."

So why did it take us 240,000 years to get to a point where culture and population make astronomic growth? Why didn't mankind of, say, 200,000 years ago build large cities and make cars? Why was it that when a primitive pre-written language, pre-building, pre-agriculture society split after 230,000 years of existence, that both parts of the split went on to rapidly develop very similar advanced societies that were comparable in development when they met?   

And if humans can do that, what about other life forms? What about crows, or dolphins? Could they suddenly develop sophisticated technologies? 

As usual, more questions than answers. 

G is for Goshawk

Another week in Weymouth by myself with somewhat better weather.

Inspired by H is for Hawk and being aware of a decent Goshawk population in Wareham Forest I went on 12th in search of a suitable vantage point, and found a likely candidate on a heath with a mound with decent all-round views. Woodlarks serenaded my walk up and a Dartford Warbler perched conveniently on a gorse bush, then in bright sunshine and with blue skies I started scoping the horizon. A few Buzzards and a couple of Ravens, then a raptor glimpsed over a woodland and on zooming in unmistakably a Gos! Regular readers will know I make the annual trek to Cockley Cley in the Brecks to see distant birds, mainly males, but there's a buzz that comes from finding your own.

This bird was hefty - clearly a female. It flew around for a while, seemingly doing a territorial flight, and was then joined by a second bird, also a female. These two birds flew together over the edge of the forest and toward the heath. One turned back to be joined by a male, but the other kept on coming straight toward me. I had to abandon the scope and go to the binoculars, and still she kept coming, languidly flying straight past me at moderate height, filling the binoculars field of view, and then kept going to a distant wood. 

Writing this a few days later and I'm still buzzing. Never did I expect I would see a Goshawk that close. Just an astonishing never to be forgotten sight.

Later conversation indicated this was a well-known site amongst local birders, and my close encounter with the females is one others have had. Nevertheless to go in search of a bird and find it is what makes birding an unbeatable experience. 

I popped down to Swineham Gravel Pits later. 10 Glossy Ibis and several Chiffchaffs singing (again I gather a population through the winter here so probably not migrants). Nice, but its not like finding your own birds.

H is for Hawk. A review

An afternoon of rain, so I headed to Dorchester Plaza to see H is for Hawk, the dramatisation of the memoir by Helen MacDonald.

For a proper review see Mark Kermode's review. 

We get a lot of Goshawk screen time and it is excellent, fascinating to see both the close up behaviour and the hunting behaviour as seen through the eyes of a falconer. As a birder, I obviously tried to age it. It seemed to me to be moulting from juvenile to adult plumage. Brownish pale-tipped feathers on the back with solid grey ones poking through in patches, horizontal barring but quite heavy and brownish. And then, suddenly, it was altogether paler, with fine breast streaking and a solid blue-grey back. The head, too had a much stronger white super. I almost stood up in the cinema and say "Its a different bird! They've replaced a moulting juvenile with an adult!" but I guess nobody else would have the slightest interest. (Google tells me four birds were used in the filming. I think there may have been two juveniles due to the varying blotching on the breast but I have no idea about the fourth). 

Only later did it occur to me that the scene where Claire Foy is taking the hawk round the house for the first time, and the bird does bird things and she talks to it, must be unscripted. You can't direct a Goshawk, so she must just ad-lib her way through this scene. Impressive. 

But for me the sight of a Goshawk close up was fantastic. And a bit more than fantastic. There was a moment when the adult female was first on screen, and I thought yes, that blaze above the eye, the clean lines of the face, that huge vicious beak, that keen eye. We've met before haven't we Mrs Goshawk? In a local wood several years back. I'd turned a corner and immediately there was a commotion. I was late in getting my binoculars on it and mucked up the viewing, but for a moment, there she was, at the top of a tree, gleaming beady eye looking straight at me. Mrs Goshawk.

Weymouth 2-6 Feb. Wind and Rain.

I needed to be in Weymouth for the week 2-6 Feb, but was free most of the days. Yippee! Unfortunately the gale force SE wind and lashings of rain did diminish the birding opportunities somewhat. Particularly inland where the lush and beautiful county of Dorset is either flooded or mud-sodden and impassable.

I visited Portland Harbour several times, in several places, but the pounding waves meant bird-totals were low, and it wasn't until the morning of 6th when the shift of the wind and a rare break in the clouds delivered excellent viewing across a mill-pond flat harbour. Red-Necked Grebe can be a difficult bird to get on the list and I'd missed them previously in the week so was delighted to get the one off Castle Cove. To my eye, winter plumage birds are just dull, featureless, lacking the personality that seems to be present in the other grebes. But a very welcome year-tick none the less. I got 3 Black-Necked Grebes, their distinctive head-shape being visible at distance, and a total of 7 Great-Northern Divers. The other birds were mainly Shags, Red-Breasted Mergansers, Great-Crested Grebes,and a couple of Razorbills. 

Further afield I visited the fleet west of the bridging camp and got the immature male Long-Tailed Duck and a Slavonian Grebe, and a trip to Abbotsbury to investigate the feasibility of walking down the beach to the tank-traps to view the swannery, which I declined leaving that for hardier souls, produced a bonus Barn Owl. 

Wednesday was bright so I went to Studland and Jerry's Point, which was easily reachable and had local birders. 3 Slavonian Grebes, 6 Black-Necked Grebes, and 3 Great-Northern Divers were nice. But the highlight for me was the White-Tailed Eagle that flew slowly over the opposite forest. Huge, dwarfing the Buzzard that harrassed it, with a bright white tail! My first this century. My excitement was not shared by my fellow watchers, who appear to view this as practically a garden bird, conversation drifting into the many places these birds are now regularly seen. 

Finally a trip to a flooded Lodmoor on 6th. The first winter Little Gull was bounding back and forth on the pools by the beach road, and 68 Golden Plover sat just off the bench. A distant Marsh Harrier flew around. A nice end to the week,

June 2025. Sooty Shearwater at Portland Bill

An easy month for a highlight. 9th June, Another guilty secret of my list put to bed. A Sooty Shearwater had been at Portland Bill for a few days and fortunately was still there. My previous sighting was last century, with optical equipment that was poor even by the standards of the time, and a general agreement that those birds arcing away off Spurn Head were probably Sooties. Definitely some of them anyway. So a relief to get cracking views as it worked its way back and forth. And Balearic and Manx Shearwaters in attendance, so just an outstanding trip. 

How good were the views? Well you can see for yourself below. The video is spoilt by some idiot blathering on whilst an ever-polite Martin Cade stands by. I wonder who that idiot could be?

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