Lesser Crested Tern, Desert Wheatear and points Due South

I'd always planned a big old day out to end my Big Year in style, though I anticipated it being sometime the other side of Christmas.  But then the streak of excellent birds in the south continued and on top of the long-staying female Desert Wheatear in Dorset a Lesser Crested Tern was reported at Dawlish Warren in Devon.  Bizarre for December, this was the first in the UK for 20 years following a bird in Norfolk in 2005: the lure of a yellow-billed tern was strong.  When Owen contacted me to say he was going the following day, I didn't take much convincing!  A 1am start for a 2am set off is never ideal but with the dwindling hours of daylight available and four target birds in three counties we needed to be in Devon by first light.

Four easy hours of driving (for Owen - I passengered gamely all the way) and we arrived after a stop for breakfast and walked to the end of the golf course towards the bird hide.  We must have turned up at a strange gap when birders had either already got to the view point or were en route or waiting for news.  This meant that there was no local knowledge for us, no trail of birders to follow.  I'm sure we probably broke some rules and we definitely crossed a fence or two, but in the semi-dark I was more worried about wading into the deep mud of the bay than offending a golfer before first light.  We had no idea how to access the hide, and in the gloaming we walked the long way to where a small crowd waited for the light to be good enough for photos of the very present and actively fishing Lesser Crested Tern.  

The famous "Elsie" was a Lesser Crested Tern that eventually bred with a Sandwich Tern in the Farne Islands during the 1990s, and though I was alive and birding during the decade, I never persuaded any of the adults I knew to take me there during the summer months.  My longing to see a Lesser Crested Tern was a perennial yearning, and though it faded over the years, knowing there was one just over the crest of the rise was incredibly exciting in a way that drilled into the nostalgia centre of my mind and let sepia leak all over everything in there.  Nostalgia seems to be a mental coping mechanism that I've gone back to time and again this year.  Before my breakdown at the end of 2024, I was very rarely a sentimental man, always looking forward rather than back, and always slightly suspicious and dismissive of people's positive spin on the past.  Perhaps it's because the future is so uncertain, and the present has contained so much pain this last year that I have retreated to the feelings of my youth, the hope and positivity, when things were less complex than they are now.  Whatever the cause, laying eyes on this Lesser Crested Tern prodded my brain into a happy place, and at the end of the day, isn't that why we go birding at all?

What a bird!  The elegance of the flight, the way it posed with such elan after a successful catch of a relatively huge fish and the subsequent perch and preen and digest of this tern left me ecstatic.  I absolutely love terns generally and it was only a week since I was lamenting the fact that I hadn't seen any new species of tern in the UK this year.  It was completely off my radar that a tern might arrive (you might say, tern up) and given that it's been two decades since the last visit by a Lesser Crested Tern the news of this bird also rekindled my passion for the year list.  A nice side effect would be to contribute to making my 2026 quest that bit easier; an unexpected lifer in December would be helpful in pushing me towards a UK list of 400 next year as much as adding to the 300+ from this year.  This was possibly my favourite bird of the whole year, in period with a lot of competition.  More on this in coming weeks.

We left Devon, and the high of the Tern sustained us on the two hour drive across to Dorset.  One of the things that northern birders often misapprehend about the south is that it takes so long to get anywhere.  On a map, the Desert Wheatear is only 65 miles away from the Lesser Crested Tern, but in practice, with no motorways, it takes as long to do those 65 miles as it does for me to drive from Manchester to Scotland, or Spurn.  That sort of blasé "ah, we'll go and get the rare birds on the south coast" attitude once again exposed as the fallacy of not really knowing any geography south of Cheshire.  As we drove, there was no news of the Desert Wheatear, and, given my propensity for dipping them, my hopes began to flag.  Having missed the gorgeous male that was in Bristol area in the summer, as for my friend Leon, this would be redemption... If we could see it.  News of the Baikal Teal that has been a long stayer at Abbotsbury Swannery broke as we neared the turn for it, so we changed plan at the last second and parked at Abbotsbury Beach.  

The walk to the western embayment was tough.  I'm a big guy, usually slow but strong enough, but walking on that shingle and gravel hill was a form of torture.  With plantar fasciitis, and my rugby-knackered knees, by the time we reached the tank traps and fence which was the limit of our viewing area, I was a wreck!  Scanning while I rested my foot, I happened on the Baikal Teal fairly quickly, and in the instant that I said, "Got it!" the small flock of Eurasian Teal it was with had lifted into the air and flown.  The Baikal fled after them, and I tried to keep my eyes on it to make sure I knew where it would land.  If it flew to the eastern embayment all would be lost!  The Marsh Harrier that had flushed them cruised by serenely, and the Teal settled down again, but in the middle of the water much further out, in terrible sunlight, and in with a couple of hundred more Teal.  We did manage a couple of rubbish views of this beautiful duck, but with time ticking and a horrific walk back to the car park ahead of us, we decided to head for the Desert Wheatear.

The stunning location of the Ministry of Defence base at Wyke Regis is an amazing location to be in, but the weirdness of wandering around the public footpath that literally abuts the fence of a military facility and looking in using high powered optics and a camera was a little unsettling.  The wind was high, and as we walked, two people told us that there had been no sign of the Desert Wheatear that morning.  A little discouraged, a little concerned not to be arrested/shot by military personnel, we rounded the far end of the base and a Black Redstart flitted up in front of us.  A beauty, but not the one we were searching for.  However, a couple of people had told us that the Desert Wheatear was associating with the Black Redstart, so fresh hope kindled and we scanned afresh.  Owen clocked the Desert Wheatear on an area of gravel that so closely matched her sandy tones that every time she stopped moving I completely lost her.  She spent an hour running between rocks, the concrete blocks at the end of the scree, and the tarmac road that ran within 20 feet of where we stood.  Taking photos was difficult because of the tight weave green fence, so every image is a little fuzzy, but I was delighted to have finally laid eyes on this Wheatear and redeemed my longest dip of the year.

We left the Dorset coast on a real high, two lifers (both absolutely beautiful birds in very different ways), one of which fulfilled a youthful dream and the other redeeming my earlier failure; three year birds to take me within a whisper of 310 for the year, and the chance of a Kentish Plover on the way home.  We did make the detour, but unlike every other day this week where the Kentish has been visible on the beach close in, this was the day it decided to stay on Stert Island at Burnham on Sea.  With light fading, wind rising, cold creeping in and rain suddenly pelting icily at us, we gave it forty minutes and then gave up.  A bird that has eluded me this year, but I can't be sad about it - the whole day was filled with elation at the quality of the birds we saw.  

I wonder what future me will have nostalgia over.  I wonder if 80 year old me (should I reach this milestone) will look back on the 20 hour day where I saw my first Lesser Crested Tern and Desert Wheatear.  I wonder if my joy will deepen in the years to come.  Given how good these birds were to watch, I suspect it might.