Lesser Scaup, Little Stint, Quail, Lesser Yellowlegs and turning a mental ankle.

When I decided to try a Big Year, I was aware that the June/July/early August period can be a lull, and other more experienced birders advised me to keep birding during that time, or else the habit of being outside and noticing what's around you can fade.  I took that to heart, and have done a lot of local wandering the last few weeks, with (wrong) low expectations of seeing very much.  I invested in some books and resources about butterflies and dragonflies to better educate myself, and I have enjoyed trying to find and photograph some of these.  However, one of the problems with experiencing a bout of mental ill health is that you feel you can't trust yourself.  Your emotions feel alien.  Sort of like when you turn your ankle and it no longer supports your weight - and from then on, you're always a bit suspicious of trusting what was always a solid foundation previously.

I have never been particularly averse to being alone.  Loneliness wasn't ever a problem, and I've been known to vanish into the countryside for days at a time with only the wide world as company with no ill effects.  And that still stands as true today.  I'm a little quieter than I used to be.  A little more introspective, less likely to jump in with a witty comment.  But most of the time, I'm largely the same as I ever was.  It's the times when that mental ankle turns that makes life a little more difficult. because you don't know when it's going to happen.

I did a lot of travelling in June, both for birds and for work purposes.  Much of it was alone.  My usual birding buddies were either away, or working, or dealing with life-admin.  So I drove a long way alone.  That was where my sense of self-trust was eroded.  Driving back from Frampton Marshes having had a fantastic encounter with Collared Pratincole, I suddenly realised that I was tense with a deep anxiety, for absolutely no reason.  Knowing deep down that company would be the natural way to overcome this sudden anxiety, I felt that my solo travel was playing a part in my struggle.  Before this year I rarely travelled alone - I bird solo locally twice every week, but my longer trips are usually an occasion for company and laughter.  An overwhelming tiredness was waiting in ambush for me at the end of my Frampton visit, and when I arrived home I surrendered to it, sleeping for 18 hours.

So I avoided the longer trips I had planned for a bit.  I did not try and see the Caspian Tern (one of my all-time favourite birds) or Night Heron at Cley.  I stayed at home when the Zitting Cisticola and Bonaparte's Gull graced Kent.  I didn't even get to my local patch for a few days.  Then I made an unwise decision, and in a fit of temper at my own mental frailty, I got into the car and drove to see the Blyth's Reed Warbler at Upsettlington and the White-winged Scoter at Musselburgh.  I usually enjoy travelling north, but the reality is that this trip (despite the success and real joy at seeing the birds) left me shaky.  With a beer festival planned in with my dad later in the week looming both pleasurable and with a measure of dread at social interaction, I resigned myself to hanging up my bins and not birding for a week to conserve my mental peace.

The birding gods had other ideas.  The very next day, Colin Davies found a Lesser Scaup at Pennington Flash, only 4 miles from home.  Lesser Scaup was one of my remaining anatidae targets for the year list, and would be the 46th species of duck, goose and swan I saw in 2025.  I walked there, and regretted it after two miles.  The day was pregnant with that heavy, humid, sticky heat and every horsefly in the kingdom wanted a piece of me.  An hour after setting off I arrived, pig-headed stubborn, sweating, bites on every limb and, bizarrely, my ear; I was not in the mood for the heat-haze concealed distant murky blob that the Lesser Scaup had become.  Yet this was a moment of quiet victory too.  I had not given in to the shadow of depression that was beginning to dog me.  I had chosen to step out of the house and make an effort, and left the car at home.  

I chose to see it as a positive, and that buoyed me on my long trudge home.  I've since been back and had some better views of the Lesser Scaup, but that first visit was worth it.

Two days later, the birding gods sent a Little Stint in full summer plumage to Rumworth Lodge in Bolton, 5 miles from home, where Simon Warford was waiting with a camera and who put the news out quickly.  I walked there, and arrived to see the stint flying away from me down the shore line.  Getting my bins on it for a prolonged flight view, it vanished, never to return.  I spent an hour rooting around on the inaccessible banks of the reservoir, trying to avoid the inevitable horseflies and eventually giving up after the eighth bite.  This was my 270th bird of the year in the UK, and I was glad I'd seen it locally rather than driving miles for one.  The walk home was painful and slow, but the exercise helped and I felt my mood lift further.

Part of what I love most about birding is helping others to see birds.  I put as much effort into helping my friends see new birds as I do into my own birding and I get a genuine buzz from them seeing something new or unusual.  This meant that I was happy to be company for my friend as he went to see Cattle Egrets for the first time in the UK at Martin Mere, and we enjoyed views of the orange and yellow summer plumage on the birds as they hopped around the feet of the Longhorn cattle on the reserve.  Stopping off on Curlew Lane on the way home to try (successfully) to find Corn Buntings and Yellow Wagtails I heard the distant but distinct song of a Quail.  Immediately, and no more than 25 metres from where we stood, a second male sang back.  I couldn't believe it.  We crept along the road verge and got within 5 metres of where a male was making strange growling "bow-wow" contact calls - something I'd never heard before in person.  An hour of patient waiting, and constant Quail calls, and one dashed across the front of a row of wheat stalks and vanished.  

I was elated.  I've spent dozens of mornings this year from 3.30am at half a dozen sites where I know Quail are singing, and heard so many but never got eyes on one, and yet here, in the early afternoon on a road verge in Lancashire I heard two and saw one.  

Surely that was it for a week in which I had already seen four new birds for the year, having expected none.  Then, late in the evening, I saw a message from a friend that just read: "lesserlegs, Morecambe hide".  The following morning I slowly drove the 50 minutes north to Leighton Moss more in hope than expectation, having missed two Lesser Yellowlegs earlier in the year, but on arrival the classy American shorebird was feeding amongst a big flock of Redshanks.  Though the light and distance were not on my side, it was really good to be able to compare these superficially similar species (distant juvenile Redshank a potential confusion species) and note the slender build and darker bill of the Yellowlegs.  The way the American bird holds itself more horizontally than the more generally upright Redshank, and the upper plumage of the Yellowlegs reminding me of a stretched out Wood Sandpiper.  Feeling good, I walked around Warton Crag for a while, testing my (abysmal) butterfly knowledge before happily driving back to the Mosses to fail to hear a Corncrake that has been reported singing there.

Five new for year birds to start July, with Scilly still to come at the end, which will be a test of my recovery from the shakiness at the end of June.  Recovery is progressive; but progress is not linear.  There are peaks and troughs, areas where we circle and spiral, there are dead-ends and back to square ones.  It's not been an easy half a year, but it has mostly been a good one, and that is worth remembering even when I feel like I can't easily trust my own mental resilience.