Grateful for the bright, the bold, the bizarre

Gratitude is a strange emotion, a strange state, a weird beast.  For there to be gratitude implies someone to be grateful to for something they have chosen to do, and yet I exist in a state of gratitude for the wildlife I've encountered in the last couple of days.  This is an odd position for an atheist or agnostic to be in.  To whom am I directing my gratitude?  Or am I missing the point, and it's the emotional positivity to see beyond self to a wider world that I should enjoy rather than tying myself in knots about the nature of being?

I wish I knew how to stop philosophising about my experiences.  To put it bluntly the last two days have been unexpectedly brilliant for birds.  After the hard march for the Hooded Merganser on the 18th April I fully intended a couple of days to rest.  However, news of a Wryneck showing in a sheep field in Burton village pricked my ears and I spent an hour or two in the sun watching this bizarre and cryptic Woodpecker feeding on ants crawling up fenceposts.  After last year where I really struggled to see a Wryneck and finally jammed one on Scilly I was wondering if I'd get my eyes on one in the UK at all.  Usually Wrynecks appear on eastern coastlines of the UK, so I was delighted with a little west coast rarity.  

While watching this bird with joy I wasn't really aware of the chatter around me, but watching back my rubbish phonescope videos I can hear people discussing with dense and joyless cynicism their numbers of followers, subscribers, and plotting how to monetise birding.  I understand that this is the world we live in, but it just seems such a depressing reality to hear people talk out loud about their disappointment that the Wryneck was too far away because they wouldn't get good numbers of clicks.  Perhaps I've recorded a fragment of conversation out of context, but it didn't feel like they were watching a Wryneck because a Wryneck is weird and cool and a frankly bloody bizarre rarity.  Its value was weighed in content and clicks rather than firsthand delight at the experience.  Perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick and there's more context, but when clickbait culture drives birding rather than birding driving the content we consume it feels to me like the tail wagging the dog.  But that couldn't lessen my gratitude at spending time watching the behaviour of this bird, and the number of less experienced birders there seeing their first Wryneck was a delight.

Monday was a working day, so apart from a sunrise walk to see the Yellow Wagtails back on the Moss, I cracked on and didn't once look at BirdGuides.  Until a friend of mine who lives in Gronant in north Wales messaged to say there was a Hoopoe showing well in a paddock there.  His photos 20 minutes later were absolutely jaw-dropping.  The bird appeared to be walking less than 15 feet away.  I had a case of the FOMO blues, my fear of missing out almost robbing me of my gratitude over seeing Hooded Merganser, Tree Pipit, Woodlark, Cuckoo and Wryneck, not to mention the beauty of my Yellow Wagtails in the morning.  I held my water, reasoning that it might stay into the evening.  Kris kindly offered me a lift in the event it stuck around, and we set off for the first evening twitch of 2026.  I love those evening twitches when the light stays late enough to give good views and spring brings warmth.  We arrived in beautiful sunshine to a crowd of about 50 people standing and sitting on the pavement no more than 20 metres from a Hoopoe in a horse paddock.

This confiding and beautiful bird kept coming closer and closer, raising its crest and flapping its wings, throwing back weird larvae to eat.  We watched it for an hour before a horse walked too close and flushed it over a caravan roof.  Subconsciously I always lump Hoopoe, Wryneck and Bee-eater as a sort of trinity of vagrancy.  Birds that occur every year but which I am always super happy to see.  Birds for which I am profoundly grateful.  To see two of the trinity in consecutive days has been amazing... is it greedy to hope for a Bee-eater tomorrow?

A minor detour on the way home gave us an hour near the Point of Ayr and we added Sandwich and Little Terns to our year lists before heading home full of positive feeling.  I still don't know who or what I'm grateful to for these experiences, but perhaps I should stop overthinking it and take the blossoming sense of positivity where I can.  I'm grateful for seeing such beautiful, such bright, such bizarre birds and you know what, that feels good.