I just realised I haven’t written a word of a visit to my home patch last week by the NY blogger and birder Carrie Laben of Great Auk - or Greatest Auk? If I visit a blogger somewhere and they don’t write about it within a few days I start fretting that I must have said something stupid or said something to offend them or my deodorant wasn’t working properly or I’m a rubbish birder and they don’t know how to break the news to the rest of the bloggers out there who might have heard of me…you should try being me I tell you. I doubt Carrie has such self-doubts or the nibbling paranoia I was born with though, but just in case - wow, this is one smart birder, it was a pleasure to spend a few hours birding with her, and I didn’t notice any problems with her deodorant whatsoever!

No, the reasons for not sitting down at the keyboard doesn’t lie remotely in trying to think of something nice to write about Carrie, but in the high price of oil. To be frank I and my employer have had a lot on our minds lately which has taken precedent. Airlines are apparently not designed to make profits when oil rises above USD125/barrel - at nearly USD150/barrel airline employees start eyeing airline employers with great trepidation and begin wondering how soon one will feel they can do without the other. It’s not the best feeling to go to work with - but, after a week of brooding and wishing I’d taken another direction when I exited the school-gates for the last time all those years ago, I’ve figured there’s absolutely s*d all I can personally do about world commodity prices, and I should just get on with it…

I think I’m right, so without further preamble…

Oh, actually, one thing I should say is that I haven’t taken anyone birding in the role of “guide” for a long time, and I’d forgotten just how difficult it is to take photos while a) avoiding oncoming traffic, b) trying to ID the small bird that just flew across the road and dived in to the hedge on the left, and c) doing your best to not clobber your passenger in the face with your camera lens as you whip round in your seat to look at the bird on the tree behind you. Consequently nearly all the photos in this post were taken on days when I was on my own. I may have been talking to myself as if I was guiding (please tell me I’m not the only person out there who does that), but I wasn’t. The photos are all taken in the UK though, and they are all of birds that Carrie and I saw (even if she was still in the US when I took them). Oh, and the sun didn’t shine nearly as brightly as it did on the photo below of the By Brook. Hmm. There are probably a few other things about them I could mention If I though long enough, but this is a blog post not a book chapter so I’ll press on now…

June 2005, not June 2008, but definitely the By Brook.

Okay, with Carrie being in London for a few days and me being almost 100 miles away in the west country town of Chippenham, I decided the best thing would be for Carrie to get on one of the UK’s superb trains and we could go birding in my local area (which is actually an excellent place to pick up a good number of interesting birds). Easy enough, except for the erratic and hopeless way that the UK runs its trains. We almost missed each other actually as I arrived on time at the station to find no sign of her, no sign of the train, and no sign of anyone who knew what was going on. Eventually I discovered that for reasons no-one could quite explain the train was parked up about five minutes short of the platform and would be late. A few years ago the best excuse a train company could come up with for its delayed trains was “The wrong sort of leaves on the line” (I kid you not) - and you know that sort of makes more sense than the excuse I was given: “Um, I don’t really know. It’s just stopped…” Great.

Why have I given this fascinating insight into the mess that is the UK’s transport infrastructure? Well, because it meant that we lost about 30 minutes birding time from the outset and it seriously alarmed Carrie, who - understandably - decided early on that she wouldn’t risk taking a later train back to London and her partner and would go for one in the late afternoon instead (at least that’s what I’m assuming - maybe after a few hours of my driving and the breakdown in the efficacy of my deodorant she just wanted to leave anyway). This meant that we were quite limited in how far we could go and how many habitats we could cover. I figured though that we could comfortably visit a number of different sites: the very local By Brook (a beautiful area of streamside woodland and lightly grazed meadow near to where I live); the back-lanes criss-crossing the farmland about ten miles way; and the huge man-made reservoir of Chew Valley Lake about thirty miles from Chippenham.

Had we had all day (and if it had been a more bird-active time of year - summer really is dead-time here) I might have considered making the much longer journey down to the south coast and back via the New Forest, but having a relatively short time and not knowing which birds Carrie wanted to see (it turned out she wanted to see virtually anything) I think I made the right choice. We missed a few “gimme” birds - I can’t remember the last time I drove down to the local shops and didn’t hear a Song Thrush - but we did pick up a few sought-after species - like the elegant and scarce Northern Hobby - that definitely aren’t guaranteed.

Common Buzzard Buteo buteo

Rook Corvus frugilegus

The reason I wanted to go to the By Brook is that it’s a great place for seeing a wide range of regular woodland birds in an easily accessed (and oh-so-lovely) place. Common Buzzards breed here, there’s a large nesting colony of Rooks andJackdaws, a good number of warblers eg Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler, Blackcap visit here in the summer to breed (though they’re a heck of a lot harder to find this time of year when they stop singing), and the tiny village of Long Dean about 600m along the brook from where I usually park is an excellent place for finding woodpeckers, tits, and finches as well as (Winter) Wrens (until today I’d never noticed how many Wrens there are in Wiltshire - they were singing everywhere) and Robins (yes, REAL ones). There is also a good chance of finding both Dipper and Common Kingfisher along the brook - though we missed both on this occasion unfortunately (I had hoped we could try again later in the day but we didn’t get a chance).

Long Dean was typically rewarding though. A hamlet of cottages and the one house I’d like to own more than any other in England, there are always plenty of birds here. A feeder that one householder keeps well stocked is a reliable place for birds like Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Blue and Great Tits and Nuthatch - and gratifyingly a Great Spotted Woodpecker also popped in for a bellyful of nuts before flying off again. To Carrie’s obvious delight there were also Goldfinches in the trees, and - rather oddly given that it’s normally a stream-edge species - a Grey Wagtail was walking like a tight-rope artiste along the apex of a cottage roof. All pretty excellent really - even if at this point the threatening rain gathered itself and began to look very ominous indeed…

Male Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs, Chippenham, January

Male Greenfinch Carduelis chloris, Forest of Dean, May

Male Blackbird Turdus merula, Chippenham, January

Heading back to the car I figured that spending some time out of the weather and driving round the lanes opposite the village of Marshfield might be the most rewarding thing to do. The land around Marshfield is - so it seems to me anyway - farmed ‘kindly’ and at a low-intensity, and it’s a reliable place to find some of the countryside birds I thought Carrie might be looking for like Skylark, Red-legged Partridge, and Yellowhammer (the latter, by the way, was the species that set me on a life of birding when as as a seven-year old I stumbled across one and couldn’t believe anything could be so beautiful).

In hindsight we possibly spent too long driving around what must have seemed to Carrie like identical roads (they weren’t, but they looked like it), but whilst we never found the darn Red-legs we did get great views of Skylark, Yellowhammer, Corn Bunting, and both Rooks and Jackdaws - and by looking at every single bird in the whole county I did manage to find a Mistle Thrush (not the most sought-after bird in the UK, but always welcome).

A field full of Poppies and er, other stuff near Marshfield, June 2008

Sky Lark Alauda arvensis, Wales, May 2006

It was difficult to tell whether my guest actually really enjoyed this part of the day. Jet-lag was starting to bear down hard on Carrie, and not being a coffee-drinker I was ignoring the first signs of caffeine withdrawal that she was also showing. To be honest I had forgotten too how strange it must have been for Carrie to find herself driving round the English countryside for an hour or two with some slightly scruffy English guy twice her age (well, not quite but you know what I mean). Jo pointed it out after I dropped Carrie off and it did lead me to think a lot about perception, what people expect me to be like in the flesh so to speak, how it must feel to be a female birder in a male-dominated environment - but, fortunately for anyone dreading the next few paragraphs, I’ll keep those thoughts for another post…

Suffice to say that eventually I realised that Carrie might need to eat and drink something (well, duh!), so I thought we ought to forget about the blasted Red-legs (who wanted to see them anyway) and head over to Chew Valley Lake. I’ve blogged about Chew Valley before, but as well as having some good birds (especially it must be said in the winter when duck numbers are far higher) it has a reasonably priced cafe where Carrie paid for lunch (thankyou, Carrie) and gratefully chugged a coffee down. The windows of the restaurant look over the lake and we could see hundreds of Common Swift over the water as well as Great Crested Grebes and that typical bird of the UK’s waterways and wetlands, the Canada Goose (oh we laughed at that little joke!).

Grey Heron Ardea cinerea, Cotswold Water Park, May 2008

The restaurant at Chew is on the opposite side of the lake where the best birding is usually found, and we soon headed round to both Heron’s Green (where we saw our first Grey Heron of the trip)and Herriot’s Bridge (stopping for a party of Long-tailed Tits en-route). Two birds Carrie had mentioned she wanted to see were Northern Lapwing and Common Shelduck, and we soon picked up both of them (to hell with those missing Red-legs eh), and excellent views of common ducks that if they turned up on Carrie’s patch of Long Island might cause a bit of a commotion amongst the local birders: Common Pochard and Tufted Duck. In fact we had what I used to call a “BB moment” (after the UK’s ‘British Birds’ rarity committee) when on one artificial roosting site we saw Northern Lapwing, Black-headed Gull, Eurasian Coot, and Tufted Duck, a rather neat quartet that barely raises an eyebrow here but that most US twitchers would sell their houses to get to if they all turned up together on the east coast. Probably.

Male Common Pochard Aythya ferina - yes, Chew Valley, June 2008!

Pair of Tufted Duck Aythya fuligula - again, Chew Valley, again June 2008…

The reedbeds by Herriott’s Bridge still held singing Reed Warblers, and a little pishing soon brought one into the open - a small brown bird with a longish bill clinging to a reed stem for a few seconds before diving into cover again. I like them a lot, but I’m not sure how impressed the visiting Nearctic birder standing next to me was. Fortunately a little later I looked up and saw what was undoubtedly the bird of the day flashing over - a male Northern Hobby. I’d been banging on all day about hoping to see a Hobby here and I felt a genuine sense of relief to finally spot one. One of the most elegant of the UK’s raptors these rakish and swift-flying falcons are scarce summer visitors to the UK, but are regulalry seen over Chew tearing through the Swift and House Martin flocks. After seeing a whole raft of new birds it can be difficult to get excited about yet another lifer but I’m confident that this was one bird we were both charged up by. We saw what was probably the same bird a couple of more times (while we were looking for Coal Tits and Goldcrests), but the first view was definitely the best and I think as far as Carrie was concerned enough was enough for one day.

Apart from a decent look at a couple of Collared Doves on the way back to Chippenham Station that was that. I dropped Carrie off, the train left, and my guiding days were over. I was a ‘civvy’ again. I was ‘just a birder’ one more time. Oh, I’m only joking of course, but I have to admit I had a really great time showing someone else around my home turf. Should anyone reading this be visiting the UK and looking for a scruffy, middle-aged guy to go birding with drop me an email, okay?

I’m willing and waiting my friends…

Day List:
Little Grebe Tachybaptus ruficollis 5-6; Great Crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus 100+; Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo 20+; Grey Heron Ardea cinerea 2; Mute Swan Cygnus olor 10+; Canada Goose Branta canadensis 20+; Common Shelduck Tadorna tadorna 1; Mallard Anas platyrhynchos +; Common Pochard Aythya ferina 20+; Tufted Duck Aythya fuligula 20+; Ruddy Duck Oxyura jamaicensis 2; Common Buzzard Buteo buteo 4; Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus 2; Northern Hobby Falco subbuteo 1; Common Pheasant Phasianus colchicus 2; Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus 3; Eurasian Coot Fulica atra 100+; Northern Lapwing Vanellus vanellus 15; Lesser Black-backed Gull Larus fuscus +; Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus 30+; Wood Pigeon Columba palumbus 40+; Eurasian Collared Dove Streptopelia decaocto c)10; Common Swift Apus apus +; Common Kingfisher Alcedo atthis 1; Great Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos major 1; Green Woodpecker Picus viridis 1; Sky Lark Alauda arvensis 5-6; Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica 20+; House Martin Delichon urbicum 5-10; “Pied” White Wagtail Motacilla alba yarellii 4-5; Grey Wagtail Ardea cinerea 1; Goldcrest Regulus regulus 1; Winter Wren Troglodytes troglodytes +; Dunnock Prunella modularis 3-4; Common Blackbird Turdus merula 10+; Mistle Thrush Turdus viscivorus 1; Eurasian Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus 3; Common Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita 2; Blackcap Sylvia atricapilla 1; European Robin Erithacus rubecula 3-4; Coal Tit Parus ater 2; Great Tit Parus major 10+; Blue Tit Parus caerulus 20+; Long-tailed Tit Aegithalos caudatus 6; Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europaea 2; Eurasian Treecreeper Certhia familiaris 1; Eurasian Jay Garrulus glandarius 1; Black-billed Magpie Pica pica c)10; Eurasian Jackdaw Corvus monedula 30+; Rook Corvus frugilegus 30+; Carrion Crow Corvus corone 10+; Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris +; House Sparrow Passer domesticus c)10; Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs 3; European Greenfinch Carduelis chloris 2; European Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis 4-5; Eurasian Linnet Carduelis cannabina 2; Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella 2; Corn Bunting Miliaria calandra 1