The Manchester Birder

In 2008 Cheshire had a breeding pair of Black-winged Stilts at Ashton's Flash.  I have only a hazy memory of hearing about them, as 2008 was in the middle of my wilderness years of birding, and though I would carry binoculars when I went for a walk I wasn't really trying to see anything or travelling very far.  They hit my consciousness because I was living in north Cheshire at the time and I had a commute that sometimes took me close by Ashton's Flash, so naturally when I heard the rumours I had a visit.  I didn't see the birds - I suspect I only found out long after they'd dispersed given how (rightly) tightly birders hold on to rare breeding bird information.  I wasn't too deflated; having a then father-in-law living in the south of Spain meant an annual visit to the salinas where Black-winged Stilts stalk in their hundreds. I'd seen my first Black-winged Stilts years and years before that in my teens in the mid 1990s, though I forget exactly where.  Now ...

One of my favourite weekends of the birding year, I've done a long weekend in Suffolk and Norfolk every spring since 2021.  With a varying itinerary, the point is to explore some places I rarely get to, and to see all those species that we simply don't get in the north west of England; the likes of Turtle Dove, Nightingale, Dartford Warbler, Stone Curlew.  This year it was Lee driving the narrative (and the car - thanks mate!) and we set off a couple of weeks earlier than previous years.  This had an impact on the number of migrant birds we saw, with only a single Hobby and a single Swift seen, and no Turtle Dove.  However, it did coincide with some interesting rare birds and a trip list of almost 130 species is respectable. Friday began early, a 2.45am alarm to get me to Lee's by 4am and a long slog to Weeting Heath to break up the southward journey.  Stone Curlew was pretty much the first bird we saw (and we saw five of them altogether including some courtship...

Gratitude is a strange emotion, a strange state, a weird beast.  For there to be gratitude implies someone to be grateful to for something they have chosen to do, and yet I exist in a state of gratitude for the wildlife I've encountered in the last couple of days.  This is an odd position for an atheist or agnostic to be in.  To whom am I directing my gratitude?  Or am I missing the point, and it's the emotional positivity to see beyond self to a wider world that I should enjoy rather than tying myself in knots about the nature of being? I wish I knew how to stop philosophising about my experiences.  To put it bluntly the last two days have been unexpectedly brilliant for birds.  After the hard march for the Hooded Merganser on the 18th April I fully intended a couple of days to rest.  However, news of a Wryneck showing in a sheep field in Burton village pricked my ears and I spent an hour or two in the sun watching this bizarre and cryptic Woodpecker ...

I probably shouldn't have gone birding yesterday.  I'd been birding a couple of evenings the last week, finding a Whinchat at very last light on patch and getting caught in some heavy rain, and I wasn't feeling so good when I set off.  The events of the day slowly drained me until I was shaking with fever or exhaustion. Another high quality photograph.  You're welcome.  This was taken after sunset at long range, with maximum ISO on my camera and has been brightened significantly. I'm not sure if my fuzzy head was affecting my understanding of the directions to see the Hooded Merganser at Alvecote Pools in Warwickshire or if there was some scramble of addresses and post codes from the bird apps that we all use, but arriving at what we thought was parking for the American duck left us with a nearly 3 mile walk to the bird across some terrain that was not straightforward when carrying scope, bins, camera.  There was disbelief as we reached each different milestone ...