White-winged Black Tern and Dotterel - clawing back the dips

A stormy week with some actual much-needed rain has meant that I have finally been able to see some birds within an hours' drive of home, rather than looking at every species coming in 3-4 hours away, which has made some difference to my quality of life and getting a rest this last week.  This mini influx of species into my local area has me thinking about the difficulties of living in Manchester and trying to be a Big Year lister.  I've been speaking to a fellow lister this week about the difficulties of a north west England based approach.  There are two big pluses for living here during a Big Year: one, there is a decent community of good birders; and two, it's easy (outside of rush hour) to get on the M62 to get across to East Yorkshire for autumn migration .  However, two weeks into September, and the wind has been constantly from the west, meaning access to Flamborough and Spurn hasn't been the key to a productive autumn so far.

Manx Shearwater inland in Lancashire was a bit of a surprise bird for me this week.  A report from the always productive Phil Rhodes, who patrols the water bodies of Bolton with obsessive thoroughness,  had me scrambling to see a new species in my 10km circle for the first time since the start of May.  Often the way in my Manchester circle, the first 18 weeks has all the variety I'm going to see, and the second half of the year is in many ways slow and observant birding to survey what has bred and what survives the start of winter.  So species 140 - a low number compared to the last 4 years - being the second ocean-going seabird of the year (following Great Skua in February) is a source of great local excitement.  The Shearwater was the subject of a bit of a VAR review for my 10km inclusion.  By my reckoning, it was perched on the water less than 4 metres from the boundary of my circle when I arrived and took my first picture, but within moments was flying and had clearly left the 10k.  The problem is, how accurate can I be trying to eyeball an imaginary line across an inaccessible reservoir, at dusk, in a storm?  Obviously keen to include the bird, my estimations were the subject of some gentle questioning...  More importantly, the Manxie was flying strongly and avoiding the attention of the large gulls on site, and that bodes well for its survival and relocation back to the Irish Sea.

By contrast with the good views of the Shearwater in poor weather, a report of White-winged Tern at Crossens Outer marsh north of Marshside in Lancashire piqued my attention, but left me wary of trying to see a small and mobile bird in a huge environment.  Having missed the long-staying juvenile bird at Fen Drayton a few weeks previously I had dismissed my chances of seeing this beautiful bird this year, mentally crossing it off the list as the weather deteriorates and the autumn draws in.  A quick dash to Southport to join a decent crowd of birders to see the tern, and I was watching it distantly flying against a strong headwind and landing over and over again alongside a splash pool on the marsh.  Desperately trying to get a photo with my camera (hopelessly outmatched by the conditions and distance), and then a free-hand digiscope image, being wrestled by strong wind, driving rain, prevented by the frankly unhelpful attentions of two Merlins, two Peregrines, an overflying Osprey that kept driving all the birds into the air, and being distracted by the utterly brilliant sight of dozens of Curlew Sandpipers I finally achieved a small blurry image that looks a bit like a tern.  If you squint.  So nothing concrete to take away from the encounter except the joy of all that wildlife in Lancashire and the satisfaction of pulling a species back I thought I'd missed.

I've missed out on Dotterel four times this year, including various birding taking me to north Wales, south Essex, North Yorkshire, and south east Wales.  It was to my delight that a juvenile bird has taken up temporary residence in South Yorkshire at Burbage Moor, a mile or so into the Sheffield surrounds.  My initial plan to take the 40 mile trip in the afternoon was scuppered by the traffic apocalypse surrounding Manchester, with the satnav's most optimistic return of almost 2 and a half hours feeling pointless.  So, wide awake at 4am, I set off before 5 and arrived in just over an hour and ten minutes (though doing Snake Pass in the dark and the wind is not for the faint-hearted!).  For the first 30 minutes after first light I had the Dotterel all to myself, and, though it was far too dark for photos (ISO 10,000 and still too dark), it was a delight to watch this bird feeding and preening within 15 feet of the rock I was sitting very still on.

A small group of us filmed and photographed the Dotterel for a couple of hours, and it moved within 8 feet at points.  It didn't even move very far away when my cap blew off and over the wide area of scree it was favouring.  It didn't even twitch when I walked to retrieve it!  I was reminded of my first sighting of them in the mid-1990s in a pea field near Swinefleet following a visit to Blacktoft Sands on a YOC Long Weekend trip.  I stood with ten other young people at the side of a road watching at least two (and possibly four, if memory serves) spring plumaged birds including a gorgeous female while they displayed, flying with shivering wings around the mid-May growth in the field.  A couple on the top of Pendle Hill in the late 90s aside, I didn't see another until 2021.  Increasingly I regard those formative experiences in the YOC as being amongst the happiest memories and most important impressions for the interests of my adult life, and cherish the nostalgia certain birds and locations hold for me.  I wrote earlier in the year about searching for Hawfinches at Gait Barrows and experiencing a sort of homesickness for a place I have never lived, and silently watching the Dotterel today produced something of the same feeling; a desire for a time that felt simpler and more hopeful.

Whenever I'm tempted to regard the birds that I seek and see as simply ticks on a list to try and hit 300, I have a wildlife epiphany, or an encounter that peels back all the pretentiousness of my attempts to quantify what is equally a spiritual-emotional-natural experience that connects me to times and places and memories of real importance.  But that Manx Shearwater was definitely inside the 10km circle.