Hooded Merganser in the Midlands but Tree Pipit steals the show

I probably shouldn't have gone birding yesterday.  I'd been birding a couple of evenings the last week, finding a Whinchat at very last light on patch and getting caught in some heavy rain, and I wasn't feeling so good when I set off.  The events of the day slowly drained me until I was shaking with fever or exhaustion.

Another high quality photograph.  You're welcome.  This was taken after sunset at long range, with maximum ISO on my camera and has been brightened significantly.

I'm not sure if my fuzzy head was affecting my understanding of the directions to see the Hooded Merganser at Alvecote Pools in Warwickshire or if there was some scramble of addresses and post codes from the bird apps that we all use, but arriving at what we thought was parking for the American duck left us with a nearly 3 mile walk to the bird across some terrain that was not straightforward when carrying scope, bins, camera.  There was disbelief as we reached each different milestone in the app and Google Maps and found we had another field to cross, fence to climb, swamp to wade (no exaggeration, I was ankle deep in wet mud in places), and I bumped into three gents who were having similar problems with the other of those birding apps, who could not find a place to view the actual lake.  They'd parked closer, but were about to give it up as a bad job due to the poor description of access.  Between us we shared intelligence and finally found an area that seemed to have been used to view the bird given how many muddy footprints were trampled into the shore.  Lee had gone back to get the car while I walked on to find the bird and pin it down for him.  Given we'd walked for 40 minutes to get as far as we had before Lee turned back, I was surprised when he called me only 20 minutes later to say he was back and had found a much closer place to park.  I've never known him to be much of a runner, and a 10 minute 5k was unlikely!  He'd flagged a driver down and offered him £20 to take him back to his car! I wondered which of them had been more concerned about being in a car with an axe murderer.  

All frustration aside, the Hooded Merganser showed distantly and spent 20 minutes feeding in the open at the far end of Railway Pool and we watched her being blissfully unaware of the fact that her not moving north is making her less and less likely to be accepted as a wild bird.  Sigh.  Still, an interesting and good looking bird to study, and (probably) worth the hard work to navigate our way to the muddy viewing area to finally see the bird.  The route that my sat nav had taken me had crossed a grassy field and my boots and socks were absolutely drenched for the rest of the day, which perhaps explains why I got home with a high temperature and shivering like I had the flu.  Middle age.  It's the best.  Those Warwickshire birders were so friendly and helpful - I think all five of us would have given up on seeing this bird without meeting each other there. 

We decided to go and see if we could track the Hume's Warbler that's spent more than three months at Marston Lea.  While we didn't get eyes on it we did hear it call a couple of times and more interestingly, we heard a male Cuckoo singing on the far side of the river!  Green Woodpecker yaffling away reminded us that time was ticking and we aimed at Cannock Chase for a taste of heathland birds.

Woodlark is a species that has led Lee on a merry dance.  We all have those species - things that are ostensibly easy(ish) to see, but that we just... never get eyes on.  Visits to Budby in Nottinghamshire, Dunwich in Suffolk, Kelling Heath in Norfolk and two previous visits to Cannock had left Lee empty handed for Woodlark and I think his expectations were low.  Half an hour of searching yielded brief and silent views of two - finally getting his bogey bird off his back.  By this point I was starting to feel seriously depleted, my legs ached and my ankles felt like they were made out of glass.  I was at a junction here where wisdom and health have to be a factor in enjoyment.  I hope that the 18 months of blogs (94 posts!) have shown how much I love dawn til dusk birding, how much I crave the outdoors and would rather be birding than anything else.  I chose, probably unwisely, to keep going when my body was telling me to stop.  I slowed right down, struggling over terrain I'd usually march straight across.  Part of the reason I chose to keep going is that when you make arrangements to go birding with someone else it's important to appreciate their company and spend time with them and I enjoy birding with other people.  Part of the reason was wanting to see my true target bird for the day: Tree Pipit.

I showed my photos of Tree Pipit to a non-birding friend of mine last night, and she was vaguely impressed that the bird had been so close, but otherwise, she couldn't see the reason for the effort we put in to see it.  She was interested in my rubbish Hooded Merganser shots because it's a weird and wonderful bird, and she has been wowed by pictures of familiar species like Robins and Wrens because she sees them and knows what they look like and what her normal views are like.  It was only showing her video of the display flight, the launch and shiver and shaking parachuting behaviour while singing and descending into the top of a fir tree that she understood something of why I would want to spend my day shivering in damp bracken and pushing myself past my healthy limits to see this bird.

While they no longer breed locally (though hopefully they will make a return in the future) we do usually see Tree Pipit on passage here in west Manchester and the Lancashire border, but most commonly in August, so I know I'll get to see them.  The chance to spend an hour watching this bird in spring as it sings and displays is worth a little discomfort: it's not always what the bird looks like or sounds like even that matters - behaviours are fascinating.  Spending time to observe and reacquaint myself with the way a Tree Pipit behaves in spring is the very antithesis of ticking a bird off a year list, and, though I do like a year list, it's not a numbers game when you can have the joy of learning more about a bird species first hand.

Finally unable to keep going, we opted to head home.  While I am in pain today and not feeling 100%, it was worth it.  The Hooded Merganser was nice to see, but Tree Pipit stole the show.  Worth every ache and pain.