The beginning of the end

Year listing has definitely added a welcome note of urgency to my birding.

The comings and goings of winter birds - the geese, the wild swans and more - interest me every year of course. But the pressure of a year list has suddenly made it all but essential to see as many of these as possible before Spring sets them northwards on their way home.

It's now mid February, and while it's not yet quite the end of winter, it's certainly the beginning of the end. With a free Saturday in the diary I therefore did a quick winter species v distance calculation and settled on a trip to Slimbridge WWT. A good call as it turned out.

The Bewick Swans have already started to return north in drips and drabs, but there are still plenty on the reserve. Likewise White-fronted Geese, Bewick Geese and an unlikely (and probably not wild) Red-breasted Goose. These winter wonders were joined by on my year list by a handful of Common Cranes, a magnificent Peregrine Falcon, more than a dozen Ruff and a flighty Little Stint.

That was an excellent 8 ticks to take the year list to 101 (noting that this also includes Ring-necked Parakeet and Egyptian Goose, both picked up on a quick trip to Regent's Park in London during the week).

If all this makes the trip sound very profunctary and  year list orientated, that would only be telling part of the story. From start to finish it was a wonderful day, with J and myself enjoying the sheer spectacle of Slimbridge every much as we did the year ticks.

Both individually and en masse, the birds were fantastic - there is little to beat the sight of a Golden Plover flock wheeling in the sunlight, of a Peregrine slicing through the mayhem, or of the wonderful White-fronts which bought Sir Peter Scott to this site so many years ago.

Smew-tiful

Whatever your enthusiasm, life as a 'weekend warrior' can be tough - and never more so than in the depth of winter.

With work hours long but the days still short, many of us endure five days every week without the time or the light to properly 'do our thing'.

Cyclists reach for the turbo trainers, birders snatch a few moments fresh air at lunchtime, cricketers train indoors, anglers tie rigs, and photographers set up elaborate indoor macro shoots. 

But all of us yearn for a return of the long, light summer evenings.

For a birder, the nightmare scenario is the week-day rarity - in the worst case, a bird which arrives somewhere on Monday, is reported all week and then vanishes some time on Friday night.

You can always tell when there's been one around, because Saturday morning will see the site full of anguished weekend warriors all asking each other the same question: 'anyone seen the [insert species here]'.

Today at Draycote it was [insert black-necked grebe here] as we all searched in vain for this uncommon winter visitor. To be fair it had actually turned up last Sunday, not Monday, but since my last free day had been the Saturday before the effect was much the same.

Sadly, perhaps inevitably, while the grebe may still have lurked somewhere on this vast reservoir, there had been no sighting of it by the time I left just after midday today.

While disappointing, this didn't spoil the day as much as perhaps you might think.

In fact the grebe was just one of a number of target birds for the morning, each of which would be a year tick for me.

I knew exactly where one species would be, so I set off clockwise to find it. Pausing only to find the female pintails by the overflow, I was soon happily watching a flock of c.20 tree sparrows in hedges near the feeder at Draycote Bank. Hard to find anywhere else locally, but not here, so tick #1 for the day.

Second was the long-staying drake smew. This little beauty proved much more elusive, meaning I'd walked four of the five miles around the reservoir before I finally tracked it down just off Biggin Bay.

I don't see these rare winter ducks too often, and every time I do I am struck by just how exquisite they are - surely our most beautiful bird?

Tick #3 was a more prosaic one, simply a matter of locating one of Draycote's great black-backed gulls, which I did sitting on a bouy not far off the valve tower.

There was plenty more on show besides, of course: a dozen goosander near valve tower, plenty of goldeneye, teal, pochard and wigeon, and, as I finished my five mile circuit, the 2 white-fronted and 1 pink-footed goose swimming just off shore with a small group of greylags.

A grand finale to a typical weekend warrior trip.

Bird of the day: Smew (Mergus albellus), this small sawbill duck only occurs in tiny numbers over a British winter; the drake is an absolute smasher, so always worth the trip.

Winter bounty

Inspired by Thursday's siskins I looked around (thank you yet again, internet) for a likely spot for some rarer winter finds. Inevitably I alighted on Draycote Reservoir.

Sooooo, it's 7.30am at a still-dark reservoir. The conditions are barbaric - close to zero, a scything north-westerly wind, driving icy rain, and a thin covering of snow underfoot. I'll be honest - at this point I am not a happy bunny.

But then, bang on cue, the honking of geese. There, exactly where expected in the fields between Farborough Bank and the sewage treatment plant, is a mixed flock of perhaps 300 geese. Mainly canada and greylag of course, but if I scan them closely enough...

The rather splendid Anser albifrons (photo: webted)

Ten minute later I had lost all feeling in my feet. Eleven minutes later this had ceased to matter as I found my first target, a lone pink-footed goose. Another minute on and I'd lost it again, with that treacherous voice in my head now thinking 'maybe it was just a small greylag in poor light'. 

And a few minutes later, while trying to relocate the pink-footed at the other end of the flock, I finally tracked down my second targets - a pair of white-fronted geese.

As ever, the weather and the early start and the sheer insanity of it all suddenly ceased to matter.

The pink-footed goose is of course splendid and rather uncommon in these parts (fields full of them in Norfolk of course, but that's not much good all the way over here). But the white-fronted is an even more marvellous proposition: beautifully black-striped across the belly at this time of year; pretty rare away from its normal wintering grounds (Slimbridge being perhaps the most important); and, most importantly on a morning like this, a county tick for yours truly.

I was on a roll, so perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised at the way my third target came to hand. 

For some reason the reports of pintail (numbers unknown) near the inlet had me looking for a striking (and unmissable) male bird out on the water. So I had reason to be grateful that I took the time to scan a small flock of female mallards at the water's edge, for it was here that I found the subtle and oh-so-easily-overlooked female pintail dabbling with her browner and more coarsely marked mallard sisters.

Any disappointment I may have felt in finding a greyish (if handsome) female in place of the stunning drake was soon dispelled by the nearby goosanders - good numbers of male and female birds, both striking of plumage, and another year tick.

Bird of the day: White-fronted goose (Anser albifrons), presumably (assuming not escapees from a collection) two of the Russian birds which would normally overwinter at Slimbridge.