Black-winged Stilts in Cheshire

In 2008 Cheshire had a breeding pair of Black-winged Stilts at Ashton's Flash.  I have only a hazy memory of hearing about them, as 2008 was in the middle of my wilderness years of birding, and though I would carry binoculars when I went for a walk I wasn't really trying to see anything or travelling very far.  They hit my consciousness because I was living in north Cheshire at the time and I had a commute that sometimes took me close by Ashton's Flash, so naturally when I heard the rumours I had a visit.  I didn't see the birds - I suspect I only found out long after they'd dispersed given how (rightly) tightly birders hold on to rare breeding bird information.  I wasn't too deflated; having a then father-in-law living in the south of Spain meant an annual visit to the salinas where Black-winged Stilts stalk in their hundreds.

I'd seen my first Black-winged Stilts years and years before that in my teens in the mid 1990s, though I forget exactly where.  Now that I'm well into my mid-40s I see the importance of keeping records of what you see and where because nobody thinks as a 17 year old that their memory will slip a bit, but it happens to us all in the end.  I suspect it was the long-staying bird at Titchwell in 1996/7, but I'm not totally sure.  Either way, I didn't see another in the UK until four were reported at Doddington Pool (a fancy name for a patch of wet mud on the edge of a farm south of Nantwich) in August 2022, an adult and three juvenile birds seemingly dispersed from a Yorkshire breeding success.  This was a glorious sight, a true joy in birding.  When Kris and I pulled up at the site I was dismissive of it as not being wet enough to have any waders on it, never mind Stilts, but there they were, not far away on a little pool at the side of a road.  A family group in Cheshire.  Mind-blowing.  

I've seen a few more over the intervening years, a not-convinced-it's-wild bird in north Norfolk; a single bird on Little Woolden Moss that stayed for less than 2 hours in 2023; a pair on the spit at Pennington Flash in 2024 that stayed for less than 40 minutes.  Very few birds lift my spirits like Black-winged Stilts.  They're just so unbelievable.  They look like an art student, a graphic designer, a fashionista has set her sights on creating the most dainty and elegant bird possible and sticking them on the most fashionable Milanese heels so they totter about in the water, constantly on the verge of being blown over by any breeze.  Whoever the designer was, they did a great job.  I could watch these lanky beauties all day long.

When a pair was reported before 6.30am this morning less than 20 miles from home, I was torn between going and sitting in ridiculous traffic and therefore losing time for work, and waiting to see if they stuck around until tomorrow evening, my next really free time.  As it happened, they flew not once, not twice, but three times, relocating across the area and looping back to Ashton's Flash. By the middle of the day my fear of missing out was full blown and I abandoned work, and went to pay homage half an hour south.  I'm glad I did; they were fairly close in, and they looked incredible and settled on site.  These waifish waders have crowned a ten day period of excellent birds for Cheshire and north Wales, and it leaves me to reflect on just how fortunate I am to be able to see and appreciate these birds.  How important it is to check the places near where we live.  The finder of these birds this morning was checking his local patch like he does most days, and it's that rigorous routine that led to his find.  Knowing the seasons, and the likely movements of the birds by gaining experience over time and being connected to information about the area really makes a difference.

Yesterday I was out birding with a stalwart of the local area, a man with better knowledge of the moors and oak woodlands on the flanks of the hills than anyone else I know, and he was helping me plot potential areas for Wood Warbler, a species which is slowly reclaiming woodland where masses of rhododendron has been removed.  Three hours with him taught me a genuinely huge amount, and the way he could refer to his records of, for example, Wheatear movement across fifty locations on the moor over 40 years was awe-inspiring.  Knowing that 21 Wheatear were present yesterday, but that this day in 1988 had 326 in the same locations leaves me vertiginous with knowledge, like I'm standing on the brink of a cliff of knowing.  He looked at a cloudy sky yesterday and muttered, "clearing up this afternoon, so tomorrow will be a movement day."  Three hours later the sun baked my bare head from a clear sky, and we saw more northward movement in twenty minutes than we'd seen in three hours previously.  That is the skill I want.  Not a bigger year list.  Not lifers.  Not that there's anything wrong with those things.  But I want to know, to be a repository for the knowledge of the wild where I am.

Seeing Black-winged Stilts found by a person connected to their local patch so closely only drives that intention deeper.