Wryneck and Yellow-browed Warbler: Scilly Days 5-7 Big List Energy

The Isles of Scilly are beautiful, a place with history, and quirks of community and culture that you won't find anywhere else in the UK.  The geography is gorgeous and interesting, and the wildlife is spectacular.  This particular week was tough in terms of birds.  While there was a big fall of thrushes (six species in one field stands out - Mistle and Song Thrushes, Blackbird, Redwing, Fieldfare and Ring Ouzel on Bryher) and common warblers (Chiffchaffs in double figures in every tree and a huge number of Blackcaps), we had seen all the rare and scarce birds on the islands by the end of our second day.  A near-miss with Red-throated Pipit which I now believe to be a pale Meadow Pipit, and that was the excitement done.  We missed dozens of Yellow-browed Warblers, a late Little Bunting in the teeming rain, at least five individual Wrynecks and a Richard's Pipit.  Red-breasted Flycatchers were reported on almost every island, but we missed every single one that we went for by less than half an hour each time.  We attempted to get eyes on a very elusive Greenish Warbler, and the watch phrase for these last two days was "heard but not seen", with a single-call Radde's never found again.

This was my first prolonged birding on Scilly, and large spells of it was actually fairly quiet - if you're expecting wall to wall birding, it isn't quite like that.  I like to be out birding at first light, and often don't stop until dusk (when commitments allow), but that's not how it works on Scilly.  There are people out looking for birds early, but a large number of birders simply rely on social media to get their sightings, targeting individual birds to tick rather than actually birding.  In fact, a number of times on the march to a putative sighting I saw interesting birds (mixed Gold and Firecrest flocks and warbler groups) that were largely ignored by others on a mission to see a Stone Curlew, for example, as an island tick and that was their one and only priority. The number of birders who spent more time on phones rather than actually birding was fairly shocking.  In fact, I wonder if a decent percentage of those people don't really enjoy birding as such, and have more interest in list ticks than understanding wildlife.  

This year, and Scilly in particular has shown me that I'm not particularly interested in being a big lister.  I find big list conversation really, really dull.  I mean, really dull.  "I've seen this, and that, and in 1994 - you should have been there - my friend Bob missed a such and such and I saw it..."  I don't care about having over 500 species on my UK list.  Beyond being socially acceptable in terms of conversation, I'm not jealous of the birds you saw, and I'm not trying to make you jealous of what I saw.  I don't care about rankings and league tables and the largely joyless banter about who has missed which bird.  All it really tells me is that lots of people have more money and more time than I do.  There is no real skill involved in having a big list, no fieldcraft needed.  You don't need to be a birder to be a lister.  WhatsApp, BirdGuides, forums make it relatively easy to see rare birds as long as you don't mind driving long distances.  Some of the fieldcraft I witnessed that week was diabolical - encroaching on habitat, crowding birds, shouting at a twitch, people actually sprinting to get ahead of others, pushing and shoving to see birds.  Big List Energy is not for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love seeing rare birds, and I do enjoy an interesting twitch; I love having a target, a number to work towards (in fact I should hopefully reach 400 UK species in 2026) and I have enjoyed working towards the target of 300 species this year, but it's very much a personal task.  It's not the end, the ultimate aim - it's a structure for memory and narrative and learning and nostalgia.  It doesn't require me to see a bird at all costs - and that seems to be the difference between being a birder who likes to remember what they see, and a lister who is compelled to tick birds they need rather than seeing what's there and enjoying it, learning new species when they encounter them.  There is a mentality that I just can't generate, because seeing a rare bird just isn't that important that I'll let it define my day, let alone decades of my relationships and even my personality.

Deathshead Hawk Moth shown at the log, photo by Owen Parsons.

With all that said, it was thrilling to see the Wryneck at Penninnis finally showing clearly and I enjoyed re-finding Yellow-browed Warblers that remained curiously silent.  These days actually contained some highlights that have left me with more excitement than the scarce autumn birds: two Clouded Yellows, a Deathshead Hawk Moth shown at the log, and a Prickly Stick insect on the Old Town Church hedge added the experience of some quality wildlife to the week.  The ferry home in the wind was filled with salt spray, and hundreds of Great Shearwaters, at least 9 Storm Petrels, and Great Skua close in.  Scilly is a beautiful place, and is rightly regarded as a place of birding pilgrimage that every UK birder could benefit from, but like all pilgrimages, the journey is the aspect that does the most good rather than the destination, and it's the lessons learned that make the experience worth it.