Bufflehead - a special species for 310

There are a few main ingredients that you need for a good twitch.  There needs to be a sense of urgency.  A rare bird, of course.  An arc of redemption in seeing a bird narrowly missed earlier.  A mistake or something gone wrong.  There must be jeopardy.  The Bufflehead at Foryd Bay in north Wales gave us a classic of the genre.

The Bufflehead that visited Point of Ayr last week was a very short staying bird.  In fact, I was less than 30 minutes into my journey to go and see it when it flew and I was forced to turn around.  But that doesn't come close to the frustration that Lee must have felt as he arrived and was walking in to see the duck just 3 minutes before it flew away, seemingly for good.  What a miss.

Its return, further west along the north Wales coast, was cause for celebration, but also caution.  Here was our rare bird, but would it stay?  Would it fly again?  We gave it a couple of days to settle, not wanting to waste the last free time either of us had before Christmas, and then met before 6am in a pub car park in Cheshire to car share.  Thankfully it was an isolated and dry location: I left my car boot open all day.  Oops.  We drove to Foryd Bay in the dark, a couple of hours passing with good conversation and optimism about the Bufflehead.  Arriving at the road verge where people had obviously parked on previous days Lee pulled in and we both felt the mud give way under the van wheels.  Spinning uselessly, we decided we couldn't do much about it in the pitch darkness and as this resignation coincided with Andy Stockhausen arriving on site we donned optics and wellies and abandoned ship in favour of American duck.

A short walk along the coast path and we picked the Bufflehead out well before daylight.  It was already feeding actively in the dark in a small channel next to the embankment pond and the liminal light of day caught the almost luminous white of the rear of the duck's head enough to allow us to watch.  Here was redemption for Lee, picking up one of the best birds of the year as his last lifer and year tick of 2025.  So, a good twitch so far: a rare bird, an urgent drive, redemption for a close miss.  We waited for the sun to clear the peaks and dramatic low clouds of Eryri national park so we could get views of the gorgeous iridescent sheen on the face of the Bufflehead, and while we waited were distracted by flocks of Pintail and Teal, Wigeon and Shelduck interspersed with Goosander, Red-breasted Merganser and a single male Scaup.  Water Pipits called and mingled with Rock Pipits and Reed Buntings on the saltmarsh, a Water Rail squealed over the deep, throaty calls of Ravens and a huge female Peregrine saw off a smaller male right in front of us.

Eventually the sun broke through the cloud and the Bufflehead was suffused with a warm spotlight that showed off the purples and greens of its plumage and I took a couple (1767...) of photographs as the gathering crowd grew from five watchers to twenty-five.  Remembering that we had abandoned Lee's van as a sinking ship we hustled back to find the drivers side wheels almost completely submerged in mud.  An hour of pushing, rocking back and forth, putting rocks and branches under the wheels and trying to get traction and all we had achieved was to spray me with mud and dig a wet trench in a road verge near a small airfield in north Wales.  Here was our sense of jeopardy: would we get home before Christmas?  

At no point was there a sense of panic or concern: birders are a helpful and friendly bunch and we knew there would be some help at some point.  We were still at the "laughing about it" phase of our response to this unexpected trauma when a very kind local man working at a camp next to the airport came out to help us and towed the van out of the mud.  It came free with a growl of engines, a thin smell of smoke from overworked machinery and an audible slurping "pop" of mud closing on the abhorred vacuum.  The things we do for birds.

This was bird species number 310 for me in 2025 and though my Big Year efforts have very much dried up in favour of just enjoying some good birding it's nice to have hit a round number and ended up with a seriously good-looking bird as probably my last year tick of this action-packed year.  We drove back to pick up my boot-open car and have a celebratory pint of something non-alcoholic.  What a bird, what a twitch, what a way to close out a satisfying and joyful year of birds and wild life.  Our response to the van being stuck today shows the effect that nature and wild spaces can have on our emotional and mental health: six months ago I would have panicked about being stuck, and veered between impotent rage at our circumstances and manic action to try and fix the problem.  Today I took this in my stride and never once did it threaten to bring me down.  Nature isn't a panacea for our struggles, but experiencing such riches of landscape, wildlife and human company helps build some much-needed resilience into our emotional lives.