Western Reef Heron and a return to form

Western Reef Heron, said the message on my phone.  I was, to put it mildly, surprised.  I had logged out of social media, blog, listing software and websites and BirdGuides a month earlier, putting birding WhatsApps on mute, and withdrawing into my own company for a little while.  So when several people of my acquaintance wanted me to know there was a first for Britain 80 miles from home their messages built up until not even I could ignore the deluge.

Western Reef Heron, said BirdGuides when I logged back in.  Three exclamation marks to tell me it was a serious rarity.  Seen in Caernarfon, a favourite place of mine full of friendly people, good birders, great scenery and the potential for close encounters with wildlife.  I pondered.

My withdrawal wasn't a mistake, or a whim, or a tantrum.  I needed a break.  Was I ready to rejoin the hobby?  Was I ready to socialise more broadly?  Was I refreshed enough to want to go birding - not just twitching the heron, but was I looking forward to walking my patch, to finding birds again?  These were not academic questions.  I was in danger of fizzling out in terms of birding and if I pushed too hard, too soon, I was worried that I might see every twitch, every patch visit as a duty instead of the zen comfort of the experience of wildlife that I have felt about my birding encounters for years.  I'd tried to force myself into a more birding-focused mindset while visiting friends in Yorkshire, spending a morning at Wykeham to see Honey Buzzards, Spotted Flycatchers and Turtle Doves round the corner, with a bonus Woodchat Shrike at Flamborough for dessert, but honestly, it all left me a little bit cold.  Every one of those birds is something I delight in seeing, but I was trying too hard to enjoy it and it felt a bit false.

My friends began to go and see the Western Reef Heron.  I had mild jealousy over their photos, but no great burning desire to race to see this elegant Egret. I waited, and I slowly reintroduced myself to the online aspects of my life, and I wondered if I was going to try and see this beautiful bird.  Suddenly, the old hunger to see new species was there, and I was seized in an unhealthy frenzy of urgency to travel.  I picked a bad time, arriving half an hour late, standing in the rain with Caernarfon castle behind me and a river bank covered in egrets and herons in front of me; but with no grey/green Mediterranean vagrant in sight.  The sun set and I left, driving home despondent.  My risk-taking had not paid off.

Western Reef Heron (!!!), my phone insisted, at 7am the day after.  It had returned to Foryd Bay, the beautiful saltmarsh and coast where I had seen the male Bufflehead earlier in the year.  I thought about it for a moment, and then got my gear together into a disorganised pile, arranged to pick up a friend, and drove slowly across north Wales.  A small and friendly crowd was gathered as we parked and set up scopes and I got the first taste of the excitement of seeing the new return to me; the first adrenaline, the first time I really felt enthusiasm for birding in weeks.

I don't usually have such ups and downs in my birding.  The last two years have been turbulent, but it isn't an exaggeration to say that birding and my local patch have got me through the hardest experiences.  So my descent into lethargic ambivalence about being outside was fairly out of character for me.  I suppose we all need a rest, a break sometimes, and I'm trying not to over analyse my month of disconnect.

A very helpful and knowledgeable lady got us on the Heron and I couldn't have asked for a more stunning bird to reinspire me.  Almost a blue-green hue in the right light, the dark morph of the Western Reef Heron is officially a grey bird with a white throat patch, and fluorescent yellow feet.  It stalked in Egret style across the distant mud and made me reflect on seeing my first Little Egret in 1994 and being absolutely mind-blown over it: this tropical(ish) wanderer setting exotic feet on British mud.  I was captivated by the whole scene, an Osprey fishing in the bay beyond, geese and herons claiming premier sunbathing and fishing spots in conflict with each other, friendly company, and glorious sunshine all coming together to make me wonder why I'd ever stopped wanting to do this, even for a moment.  Two lovely members of the public came to speak to us to ask what we were watching, and they had a look through my scope.  They were delightful, interested and interesting, full of positive energy.  It was as if the universe was making the experience as positive as possible: a flawless morning of birding and integrating with people that would draw me back fully to my source of peace.

While the Western Reef Heron never came close enough for a good photograph for me, in every other respect this was exactly how I would like every day to go.  I drove home full of resolve to spend more time outdoors.

I think a person has to be particularly adept at compartmentalising in their mind if they can go birding without finding other aspects of the natural world fascinating.  While my passion has always been birds, an appreciation of dragonflies and butterflies amongst other things has been a growing and natural consequence of trying to understand the habitats and complex interactions of birds with their wider environment.  My next two forays into the wild were in search of a dragonfly and a butterfly.  Norfolk Hawker dragonflies were, for a very long time, confined to the south east and East Anglia due to the need for a specific microclimate to help them breed.  Climate change has meant that these rare dragonflies have spread and are recorded more widely, but remain a scarce and remarkable species to find.  Then, about three years ago, a small number were discovered at Bickershaw CP in Leigh, in Greater Manchester, part of the Wigan Greenheart initiative. This is a green belt of wetland and scrub that sweeps around from the Manchester Mosses west and north across Wigan to the southern edges of Lancashire at Chorley.

Bickershaw has been part of my 10km circle but is somewhere I rarely venture - almost everything I can see there I can see at Pennington Flash which is marginally closer to me, or at Cutacre, or on the Moss.  Add to this that it is occasionally pretty rough in terms of urban usage, and it hasn't had the attention it deserves from me.  The famous White-tailed Lapwing that did a tour of the UK landing at Blacktoft Sands and many other iconic sites spent 24 hours at Bickershaw.  I decided to spend a little more time there myself, and went hunting dragons.

The small pool where the Norfolk Hawkers have been seen has a little banking area to stand on and overlook the reeds.  The Hawkers were there instantly, investigating me, swooping in to have a look.  Four of them.  All males.  I was elated - these red and green jewels are charismatic fliers and I was determined to get a photo of one no matter how long it took.  After two fruitless hours, my resolve was crumbling; it is not easy to photograph dragonflies with a 400mm prime lens and a camera set up designed for birding.  I lifted the camera one last time, fired off three shots at a flying Hawker, and fluked one in focus.  An excellent result!

I sometimes suffer with insomnia, and June was a month of very little sleep.  Eventually this tiredness leaves me at a low ebb, and I need to recharge somehow.  I've written before about how Gait Barrows and the area around Arnside is a spiritual home for me, and, feeling low and in need of something to break me from my malaise, I drove there sometime after midnight with no real purpose except to sit and take in somewhere beautiful.  I must have dozed off in my car, because I woke at first light and spent a couple of slow hours watching flyover Ospreys, a Hawfinch feeding young, and a Green Woodpecker hunting ants along the base of a dry stone wall.  Being so close to Foulshaw Moss made me think of two insects that the reserve is famous for: White-faced Darter, and Large Heath butterfly.  

Large Heaths are gorgeous, mobile, and rare, and that rarity is in no small part due to their being one of the few species of butterfly that prefer the marshy bogs of the north rather than the warmer and drier southern climates of the UK.  In fact, before people got greedy and destroyed the peatlands of Manchester, the Large Heath was known locally as the Manchester Argus because of how common it used to be all over my patch.  With them long gone, reintroduction schemes on Astley Moss being inconclusive in terms of how it will all pan out, and the difficulty in accessing the site in my own 10km circle I decided to visit Foulshaw to see one of my favourite butterflies.  

Foulshaw is a place that rewards long, slow, meandering visits.  There seems little to see at first glance, and yet, given three or four patient hours, there is a wealth of specialised plant, invertebrate, and avian life to see, alongside a fair number of reptiles.  I took my time in the intense warmth of a(nother) heat wave.  I saw two White-faced Darters, and five Ospreys including three chicks on nest, but by far the most abundant creature there was the Large Heath butterfly.  I saw dozens of them, never resting in the open, always obscured or flying rapidly, energised by the heat of the late morning sun.  Snatching blurry photographs of them, I eventually was forced to retreat when the number of horsefly and various other biting terrors created a bumpy hillscape on every exposed area of skin.

In hindsight, these encounters with insects was what I needed to restore me to some sort of equilibrium.  Not the urgency of twitching rare birds, nor the pressure of "you should be enjoying this" while looking for scarce birds in Yorkshire; not the intensity of listing for year or patch or lifers, nor the constant messages on WhatsApp groups about the birds we don't ever see in Manchester giving me FOMO twenty times every day.  The best thing about going to see the Norfolk Hawker and the Large Heath was that it didn't matter if I didn't see them.  The disappointment of missing the Western Reef Heron first time round was a bitter blow that I just don't think I would have had had I not seen Large Heath, and that's a much healthier place to be.  

Birds will always be my great love, but sometimes even the deepest obsessions have to breathe.