Hype and hypothermia for Hydrobates

With news of the Leach's Petrel at Idle Washlands coming through this morning plans to go birding locally changed rapidly, and I picked Kris up for the 90 minute drive at 10.30am.  This was a late and leisurely twitch!  We arrived on site and were reminded how rare it is to see these birds inland: Mission village was busy with parked cars and scope-toting twitchers trying to connect with a bird usually only available on the mainland from Liverpool Bay in the autumn following north-westerly winds.  We quickly got onto the bird and had a moment of strange dislocation, with a bitter wind blowing strongly across the water we were watching Sand Martins swoop above the heads of a Common Scoter and a Leach's Petrel.  The Petrel was so distant and not moving, and for a long time I wondered if it had actually died, but then it unfurled those delicate wings and danced a quickstep on the waves to avoid a Great Crested Grebe.

Hydrobates leucorhous is the scientific name of the Leach's Petrel.  With a background in Latin and Greek from my theology days at university, the names given to birds are often deeply interesting to me.  Hydrobates is Latin for "water-walker" and leucorhous means white-rumped.  White-rumped Water-walker is an excellent name for a Leach's Petrel, in my view.  

Petrels have always fascinated me.  The name "Petrel" comes from the Biblical story of Peter in the boat encountering Jesus walking on the water and then stepping out to walk on water himself - Peter the water-walker for whom all the Petrels are named.  Their habit of taking steps as they hold their wings up and away from the body in order to harness the wind with no effort whatsoever is such a characteristic look that seeing it on a body of water 40-odd miles from the coast in a cold and blustery March day made me think of pelagic trips to see Petrels in warmer climes.

We relocated a little further around to see if we could get a better angle for photos, and eventually, long after all feeling had left my fingers and toes in the freezing weather, the Petrel flew to avoid an aggressive Coot, came close in and landed on the water no more than 30 metres away.  The light was poor, the wind was icy, the rain was lashing at my optics and yet I've never felt more hyped to see a seabird inland.  As soon as those legs were deployed to walk on the water a chorus of audible sounds of joy from the assembled crowd really lifted my spirits.  It was a long two hours waiting for the Petrel to fly closer in that biting wind, but familiar faces and friendly birders are good company and I really enjoyed bumping into people I haven't seen for a while.  On the walk back to the car I was mistaken for a famous birding YouTuber which made me laugh - there's more chance of me being mistaken for Peter on the water than me starting a YouTube channel.

The timing of this bird is strange to me, associating Leach's with late September and early October.  I'd always wondered why Leach's Petrels are so late around our shores compared to the late summer occurrence of Storm and Wilson's Petrels, and a little reading in the car (by Kris - I was driving) revealed that Leach's Petrels breed so far north that they have to delay their breeding season to avoid predation in the 24 hours of summer daylight they encounter at such latitudes. This in turn delays their appearance on passage around our coasts. Having seen poor views of my first Leach's last autumn and not getting anywhere close to taking photos on a day where a wave literally breached the sea wall and washed into my car, seeing this bird close up and flying inland felt like a new bird, a lifer.  

As Kris said, almost getting hypothermia for Hydrobates is worth it for the hype.