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Buff-breasted Sandpiper and westerly winds

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For the second autumn in a row westerly winds have dominated (so far).  This means that rather than the European mainland species and Siberian specialists that we often look to September and October for, we've been treated to the start of an American influx of birds. The last few weeks have seen relatively huge numbers of American waders flow through the UK, and as someone who nominally lives in the west, this benefits me - easterly winds might be best for migration on the whole, but I love a strong westerly. There have been three birding experiences that have made a mixed picture of my week.  Nightjar has been a local breeder for a while now, but is never an easy bird to actually lay eyes on in Manchester.  There are four or five locations where they can be heard, and the distant two-stroke motor noise of their song over the Moss has become one of my favourite local sounds.  When a patch birder in south Manchester was searching for a Spotted Flycatcher as GM patch g...
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Spotted Crake

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My first Bittern was an incredible encounter at Leighton Moss in 1993.  Sitting in Griesdale Hide with the 13 other people on the Bolton YOC long weekend to Arnside, a thin row of reeds in front of us no more than 10 feet away had, unknown to us, concealed a Bittern for all the time we'd been in the hide.  It stepped out right in front of me and I whispered at the top of my lungs, "Bittern!"  I sat and absorbed every detail of the bird as it hunted so close in I could hear its softly splashing footsteps in the shallow water.  We'd been scanning the distant reeds for Bittern shapes, for reeds moving against the breeze, for the shadow of a reedbed enigma and here it was, in touching distance.   The Water Rails that breed on my patch are incredibly difficult to see.  We know they're present all year - they're so vocal, so loud, so distinctive that you can't fail to catch up with them at some point.  We hear them contact calling the juveniles, and cat...
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Red-throated Pipit in October 2025: 11 months later...

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October 14th 2025 was a great day of birding on Bryher.  It was a windy, exciting autumn day and there had been a large fall of thrushes and common warblers on the island.  Flocks of Siskins, Linnets, Goldfinches were in every hedge and bramble, blackberries staining the faces of juvenile birds into interesting and exotic colouration making me twitch at every bird I got my bins on just in case it was something rare.  It's interesting how being in a place like the Scillies, Shetland, or other premier autumn rare locations can adjust your psychology.  The heightened expectation that a rare bird can turn up there much more easily than in the suburbs of Manchester makes you really look at every bird you see.  Normal patch birding has its share of passerines that flit away without a full ID, and they're almost always a Chiffchaff, a Meadow Pipit, a Blue Tit.  But on Scilly, every passerine is a potential rarity.  I dare say I've not been the only person to ...
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Thinking about thinking: the best of the summer

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Something I have enjoyed over the last few years is the chance to sit and think back over the experiences of the past, whether those are from the distant haze of my teenage years or from more recent days.  The fast pace of life, social media and the waning of the attention span sometimes makes me feel like all the birds I see and the wild days I spend are brief sparks of light in a vast and fast moving darkness.  We abandon the past as though it truly is a foreign country, a half remembered recollection dim with the fog of time and alternately shining with the patina of nostalgia.  The other half of Hartley's famous quote, "...they do things differently there" is a perfect description of our attitudes towards the sightings and the pictures of the past.   We live in true tension between a voracious appetite for the new and the next and an almost painful nostalgia; a binge-consuming culture craving viewing calories but always keening for the simpler past.  Th...
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Baird's Sandpiper - back to the warmth of the Wirral

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In September 2023 I saw my first (and only, until this morning) Baird's Sandpiper.  It was on the beach at Meols, just down the road from the tennis courts, and I'd raced there one evening after work, hoping the light would hold as I negotiated the M6, M56 and M53 in a stranglehold of traffic.  When I got there, three years ago, the Baird's was so far out on the beach I had to rely on local birders bringing more powerful telescopes to see the bird at all.  A distant buff blob could be identified based on the distinctive horizontal stance and length of the silhouette, being more stretched out than confusion species like White-rumped Sand.  It was an unsatisfying view.  The bird did come in a little closer, but by the time I could properly identify it from plumage it was getting dark and, if I'm honest, I don't truly believe I could have picked it out from a flock of Dunlins in those conditions.  Still, it was a lifer, and I ticked it and then thought no more...
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White-winged Tern, Fairhaven, September 2nd 2026

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I hate the conspiratorial lean in a conversation, that attempt to gather support through getting closer and offering a furtive opinion.  Conspiratorial was the only word I could use to describe how he leaned into me and offered a three-field-whisper: "Can you believe this was originally identified as a Black Tern?" "Hmm?" "I suppose it's fairly easily done for the more inexperienced birders." "Well," I said, watching this beautiful juvenile White-winged Black Tern sweep at high speed through a cloud of hirundines, "I can see how hard it might be to separate them." This wasn't the answer my conversation partner, a total stranger - and I mean that in more ways than one - expected.  Clearly, I had disappointed him by not knowing the difference between White-winged and Black Tern juveniles off the top of my head.  He moved on soon after, to my very great relief; when a man stands that close to you and talks in that sergeant-major-on...
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