Some days the milk of human kindness runneth over (etc etc), and I surprise even myself with my generosity. My arch-listing-rival Graham “the kitten botherer” Langley mailed to say that a mutual friend, Tommy Pedersen, a fellow birder who is a Captain with upmarket airline Emirates, was coming to the UK and really wanted to see Dartford Warbler and Wood Lark: could I suggest a reliable site, pleaded Graham, that he could take Tommy to - and as a really big favour would I join them and provide the identification expertise that he, Graham, was sadly lacking [note: Graham swears that hardly a word of that last sentence is true, and that he is perfectly capable of identifying DW etc, AND that it was he who suggested Thursley Common National Nature Reserve in Surrey, AND that I invited myself along at the last minute - but who are you going to believe my friends, him or me...? ].

Where was I? Ah, yes, apparently making things up as I go along…

What is indisputable is that at 10:00am on Feb 13th - as planned - I was waiting for Graham and Tommy in Thursley Common’s Moat Pond Car Park on a very cold, foggy morning, some 80-odd miles from my warm bed. Thursley is also an awfully long way from Tommy’s warm (I assume) bed, as he lives in Dubai (where he co-ordinates the splendid Birding the UAE website and takes itinerant Brit birders like Graham and me on tours in a massive 4×4). Unsurprisingly it is just round the corner from Graham (who’s bed I won’t even speculate about) - so no great effort to be on time then you would think…

 

(Note: Spider probably indoors warming his eight feet by the fire)

 

By the time Graham and Tommy arrived two hours late (okay, ten minutes late) I’d frozen half to death wandering around some very damp heather and gorse, but - on the plus side - had photographed one of the most morose Grey Herons I’ve ever seen and finally added the usually very common and easy-to-see Coal Tit to my year-list. I’d also met a local birder who told me exactly where on the huge Common (one of the last heathlands of its type in this part of southern England) to look for the birds we were after - and, as a real bonus, told me that a long-staying Great Grey/Northern Shrike that we’d all hoped to see, had relocated a few miles away to Hankley Common where it was apparently easy to see “from the ridge” - a geographical feature that meant nothing to me as I’d never even heard of Hankley Common…

 

Grey Heron undoubtedly pondering on the meaning of life and why his toes are so cold…

 

First of all though we had to explore Thursley and find ourselves two of the heathland’s most lovely birds: Dartford Warbler and Wood Lark, the former “lovely” because it has the charisma and upbeat personality that most Sylvia warblers possess (as well as the most beautiful claret coloured underparts), the latter because it is the most sweetly melodious singer in all of gorseland. It took less than hour to find them - which is still a lot less than it took to find the coldest and murkiest bog puddles I’ve ever stepped in incidentally. Once the sun came out and burnt off the last of wisps of fog both species became easy to see as they filled their lungs with the crisp air and let rip: the Dartford’s rattling, scratchy song given from a prominent perch, the Woodlark’s beautiful liquid notes (Teevo cheevo cheevio chee as the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins put it) pouring into the air from either a tree stump or in circular display flight when this lark’s extraordinarily short tail and plump frame make identification so easy. (The Woodlark, by the way, also has one of the most melodic scientific names of any bird - Lullula arborea: just say that aloud as if you were whispering a lover’s name to see what I mean…)

 

Wood Lark Lullula arborea

 

Whilst I tried to get a sound recording of the Wood Lark in the photos above (and failing unfortunately), Tommy and Graham wandered off towards an area of bog and sedge deep in conversation to see if the Great Grey Shrike had re-relocated back to Thursley since it was last seen at Hankley, finding more Dartfords, a handful of Greater Spotted and Green Woodpeckers, and clearly forgetting that I was around as well. Typical and something to bear in mind if Graham ever approaches you and asks for a lift to go birding somewhere: don’t be surprised if after having identified everything for him he slopes off into the distance without you. Anyway, I took the rather touching photo of the two of them below as proof that he’s not nearly as nice as he seems…

 

 

A quick check of Thursley’s “boggy bits” (as they’re referred to by us birders) didn’t turn up the shrike, though we did find an early Eurasian Curlew standing knee-deep in the long grass, couldn’t see a Lesser Redpoll (which we all needed as well) as it bounced high overhead, but did finally manage to get good-ish views of a couple of Siskins as they crossed between stands of pine. Tommy added a small flock of Reed Buntings and Meadow Pipit to his ever-expanding year-list (he was just back from a fantastic two days in Brazil so if he’d seen nothing at all bar the Dartfords I don’t suppose he’d have minded too much). Graham tried hard to close the gap between me and him - he was adding year birds every few minutes and was soon just 40 behind me. And I pottered along identifying everything for the both of them (well, that’s how I intend to record the day for posterity despite what the others may say) adding just Wood Lark and Coal Tit to mine (though who’s going to be disappointed in a brilliantly sunny morning at Thursley even if they weren’t stretching the lead over Graham while they did it? Not me, that’s for sure).

Back at the car-park we decided to head across to nearby Hankley to try our luck there. This small area of heathland is managed by the Ministry of Defence, which does mean that birders with binoculars do have to be a little careful where they stare, but access is easy and the view from the aforementioned ridge across swathes of heather is wonderful.

As luck would have it we soon found the Great Grey Shrike, teed up on a young pine about six miles away (okay, about 1000 yards). I normally delete poor photos, but just to prove that I don’t always manage to get good photos of everything I see, have a look at the useless image below: the white dot inside the hand-drawn circle is a shrike flying away and the best one I took! Still, at least we all saw it - and in binoculars it didn’t seem quite so small…

 

 

By this time it was getting on for 13:00, and with Tommy due to fly a plane back to Dubai that evening we decided that we ought to head back up the A3 to London and Tommy’s hotel, stopping en-route at Staines Reservoir where he added a Greater Scaup to his year-list and Graham added Black-necked/Eared Grebe (a bird I’d seen in Japan on the 1st of Jan: just where has Graham been birding this year so far? Singapore, Sydney, Dubai, New York, Cape Town, and Tel Aviv if I remember rightly…)

I said my good byes at Staines and drove home to pick my eldest daughter up from school. There was nothing on the news that night about an Emirates 777 having to divert when the Captain fell into a deep sleep so I presume Tommy had a good nap. Graham, I think, is in San Diego on a family holiday. Me - I’m off to Bombay and more birds! It’s a hard life this airline game, but someone’s got to do it and it may as well be three decent birders eh…?

 

Graham (left) and Tommy look for - er, anything really…

Don’t be fooled by Graham’s rather friendly and innocent expression by the way - he is not a man that anyone should give any birding help to whatsoever! Unless you really want to, in which case have a great time…

 

(I should point out for any archivists who might stumble across this is in a hundred years that Graham is actually a very nice person, he CAN identify all the above birds, and it WAS him who suggested Thursley - oh, and he’s never knowingly bothered a kitten in his life…)