Buff-breasted Sandpiper and westerly winds

For the second autumn in a row westerly winds have dominated (so far).  This means that rather than the European mainland species and Siberian specialists that we often look to September and October for, we've been treated to the start of an American influx of birds. The last few weeks have seen relatively huge numbers of American waders flow through the UK, and as someone who nominally lives in the west, this benefits me - easterly winds might be best for migration on the whole, but I love a strong westerly.

There have been three birding experiences that have made a mixed picture of my week.  Nightjar has been a local breeder for a while now, but is never an easy bird to actually lay eyes on in Manchester.  There are four or five locations where they can be heard, and the distant two-stroke motor noise of their song over the Moss has become one of my favourite local sounds.  When a patch birder in south Manchester was searching for a Spotted Flycatcher as GM patch gold, he stumbled over a Nightjar choosing to roost openly on the edge of a patch of small trees in Chorlton Water Park - no more than 300 metres from the roaring of the M60 flyover.  Since it stayed faithful to the same branch for three days I thought I'd take the opportunity to observe this night time speciality in my home county.  Rocking and swaying on the branch in between preening thoroughly, apparently in order to better blend in with wind-blown foliage patterns, the Nightjar was as oblivious to all the small birds mobbing it as it was to the constantly changing crowd of admirers standing amongst the brambles of the clearing nearby.  

Though Nightjars are not rare per se, the lack of day time views of them makes them a memorable bird to see and, coming the day after Spotted Crake in Norfolk, I was flying high on the sighting.  

The wind coming from the west had blown a good number of Leach's Petrels across the Wirral on Thursday, and I had been for a short and rainy walk at Pennington Flash in the morning, not seeing very much and squelching home to dry off.  As I walked through the door, news of a Leach's Petrel over the Flash reached me (belatedly - the bird had appeared 10 minutes after I left) and though I immediately set off back, I missed the Petrel on home soil by 20 minutes.  This would have been a low moment for me except that I'd had such incredible views of the inland Leach's at Idle Washes in March.  Still, it's never good to miss such a rare bird and one that was so far from its natural pelagic environment.  Apparently the Petrel was mobbed hard by gulls, and that's familiar from seeing other seabirds in inland areas.  The Manx Shearwater that was at Lower Rivington Reservoir a year ago, the Leach's Petrel at Idle Washlands and many other examples seem to show that the "local" birds don't tolerate pelagic species.  Manx Shearwater and Leach's Petrels can hardly be regarded as predators for Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and there was much easier prey to be had than these flighty and aerobatic birds, but they really don't enjoy the presence of the more slender seabirds.  I wonder why.  

So I left Pennington Flash empty handed, but sometimes you just have to appreciate the wildness of the weather and hope you're there early enough next time.  Having already seen Lesser Yellowlegs, Baird's, Pectoral and White-rumped Sandpipers as the American contingent of waders this year, I decided to travel north to seek sight of a juvenile Buff-breasted Sandpiper.  My favourite of these yank travellers, I've only seen one before and was hoping for close views; some of the photographs I'd seen online were frame-fillers.

An interesting quirk of migration brings Buff-breasted Sandpipers to us.  They breed in the high northern Arctic tundra and migrate through central north America to winter in Uruguay and Argentina.  This migration path makes them unusual on the east and west coasts of the USA, and they are regarded as a rarity in those birding hotspots as much as they are here.  Where British birders often think about migration being either Yanks or Sibes/Europeans as though those huge land-masses with massive variation in their ecosystems are a simple east/west matrix, it is a much more complex pattern.  The reason why we have these birds annually (only Pectoral Sandpiper is recorded more often in the UK, traditionally) is that a small number of the breeding population of BBS are found in the extreme north east of Canada and these birds avoid landmasses altogether as they migrate directly to South America.  They fly directly across the Atlantic almost non-stop to Uruguay and this means that any prevailing westerly stormy weather can drive individuals further east where they usually land in the South West of the UK, though they can be found anywhere.  As a result, I've seen more Buff-breasted Sandpipers than some of my American birding friends!

Arriving at Castle Lake at Bishop Middleham at 8am, we were just in time to hear that the Pectoral Sandpiper that had been present for a week was showing in front of the hide.  As always the friendliness of the north east was evident, with local birders helping us to get access to various points of the area, giving advice about how to see more of the shore.  A very helpful local found the Buff-breasted Sandpiper and rushed up the field to let us know - thanks to her we got eyes on it relatively close in, before it spent the next two hours 400+ metres away on the far side of the lake.  It's always good to bump into people who you know from online, and it was great to meet Andy Firth who spent many years birding at Sandbach Flashes 45 minutes south of me and now patches at Castle Lake.  His generosity of time and expertise allowed us to refind the Sandpiper a handful of times, and it's always interesting to talk to people who have relocated and adopted new patches to see what they observe of their new local patch.

It was a pleasure to watch the BBS for a couple of hours (hoping without success that it would come close in again for a photo) and eventually pressing engagements back in Manchester peeled us away from our observation of the gorgeous little wader.  It was useful to compare it to a juvenile Ruff there on site - a lot of these waders are easy to ID if they're right in front of you in good light, but can be much harder to pick out in direct sunlight, at distance, in heat haze, or simply obscured.  

A big Goshawk flew over the car in the Dales on the way back west in the sunshine, as good a bird as any I've seen this week, and a fitting way to end a bird-filled few days in the westerly winds.