Nutcracker, Desert Wheatear and Rosy Starling

A very niche starter, and one for people of a certain age, the theme music of the 90s TV program Due South (by Jay Semko) has always had a strangely transporting effect on me.  Hearing it, I feel a sudden (and almost certainly entirely inaccurate) Canadian-ness flood my mind.  I've never even been to Canada.  I don't know what it is, or why it should be so, but that song simply seems to tap into a seam of nostalgia and leaves me feeling an alien dislocation in the most positive way. 

There have been a lot of words written and voiced about the wait from 1991 for a visit from a Nutcracker that would be accessible for all to the shores of the UK.  The build up of sightings of birds irrupting from further east into the Low Countries has had predictions and excitement rising on various group chats and I heard the conversation around where the first sighting might be when I was amongst the throng at the Rufous-tailed Robin earlier in the week.  When the easterly winds turned back to the west for storms Austen and Boelo I dismissed any chance of Nutcracker making it over the North Sea.  Shows what I know, when photos taken on Friday 23rd October of the first (perhaps only, but this may age badly...) Slender-billed Nutcracker in a garden in Mundesley sparked a mass twitch on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th.  

I was stuck and couldn't go.  Monday passed, and sightings came in, and then Tuesday came, with opportunity to get over to the east.  Rain lashed my car on the way to join Lee, who kindly found space for me in his car yet again - it does make a difference to many birders to have a solid, honest, reliable friend who is dependable and welcoming - it's not easy watching others succeed while you feel left out.  The weather forecast was pretty dire for early morning, but, with a very tight schedule to keep, we would have to brave the elements to see this major UK bird.  A little context here is helpful.  In 1991 I was 11 years old and had been birding for 18 months or so.  All the talk I can remember through the intervening haze of my middle years was of the Nutcracker, the local twitchers and likely lads all having travelled to Staffordshire to see it.  I remember seeing pictures in bird books and being captivated that these birds existed.  I was desperate to be allowed to go.

At the time, my dad was in the second week of a three week hospital stay suffering from a bout of life-threatening pneumonia which had progressed into some severe secondary complications.  Just prior to this he had been made redundant.  My mum was raising three kids alone, with virtually no income, and we had to sell her car just to pay for food for us.  In that context, my demands to be taken to Stoke to see an exotic corvid of course fell on deaf and desperate ears, and my longing to see the charismatic and mysterious/comic Nutcracker transformed from an immediate pain to a long-term pang.  I thought about it down the years, and always assumed it would never happen.  When friend after friend, contact after contact told me they couldn't go, didn't have room on the weekend, I thought I was going to miss it and all those old pangs came back.   

So Lee and I braved the rain, and twenty minutes after we got to the site we were watching the Nutcracker perch authentically in a fir tree in abysmal light and sideways torrents of water.  What a bird!  Confident, comical in proportion with the huge eye and ungainly bill, beautifully understated rich brown with the intensifying white spots that make the Nutcracker look like a big Starling, the bird flew from tree to ground, from post to top of wheely bin and back.  Stalking like a clockwork toy across the orange pine needles carpeting the floor while 40 or 50 people admired its antics, drenched with rain but entirely unphased by such weather as Norfolk could throw at it, the Nutcracker's huge and intelligent eye seemed calmly aware of all the people watching it.  It's easy to see why various cultures across the northern forests of Europe and Russian Siberia have anthropomorphised Nutcrackers; the birds' stashing of seeds to see them through the winter and relatively good memory for where those caches are hidden has led them to be attributed as keepers of hidden wisdom, helpers of humans lost in the woods, as spirits of the forest that take care of the whole ecosystem.  Looking into that brown and white face I could feel echoes of that northern woodland heritage, the gentle realisation of connection with this wild bird as it eyed me and hopped closer.  Just like hearing that Due South theme music, seeing the Nutcracker left me feeling dislocated, elsewhere, simultaneously in rainy Norfolk and in dense and achingly wild evergreen forests in the north.  Perhaps it's the tiredness of a 2am start, but in those moments that feeling is more real than the whole crowd of people around me.  I revelled in it.

Abruptly gone in a flash of white plumage against the deep green occlusion of the undercanopy, Lee and I chose to leave it in peace; the custodian of this garden woodland in Norfolk would not be forgotten by us.  

15 minutes down the road a Rosy Starling had been reported at the car park at Happisburgh.  On arrival, this ramshackle little area of a beautiful village (the pronunciation of which has become one of the mysteries of the day) was absolutely bereft of birds.  No Starlings anywhere, and though we looked for 45 minutes, we simply couldn't invest much more time in searching given Lee's tight deadline.  As we were leaving, another birder pulled up and clocked a flock of Starlings on wires and picked out the Rosy we were about to fail to see.  The light was rubbish, the distance was too great, but Lee lifered Rosy Starling from the back of a toilet block in a Norfolk village, and I was reminded of my 300th bird from my Big Year, itself a scruffy juvenile Rosy on a wire over a pub on St Mary's.  At least I didn't misidentify it as a bloody sparrow this time.

Floating from success we made our way to the beach car park at Cley.  Normally, a Desert Wheatear would have been enough to have me travelling to see it on its own.  This one is a beautiful first winter male and is not a shy bird at all.  The fact that such a stunning bird would have to be content to play second fiddle to the Nutcracker tells you about the quality of the day.  The crowd on Cley beach was literally unable to stay away from the Wheatear, which flew unconcernedly towards people, often landing within 4 or 5 metres of people who stood still.  Fighting a strong wind, the Desert Wheatear perched on fragments of brick walls, dead stalks in the shingle, fence posts and wires, while the audience took thousands of photographs.  Such an incredible bird, a gem of a creature, and only my second ever.  To see this animal of warm north Africa present only 30 miles from the Nutcracker, a northern forest species, on the same day, was a little bit mind-blowing; a dusty desert sprite and an evergreen woodland spirit commingled in my experience of this remarkable day.  

As we headed home having missed an elusive Radde's Warbler at Stiffkey, we reflected on an incredible week across the east coast.  Six new birds for Lee and three for me, and the quality of wildlife between Flamborough, Spurn, Paull and Norfolk was frankly unbelievable.  From Rufous-tailed Robin to Radde's Warbler, Isabelline Shrike to Rosy Starling, Desert to Isabelline Wheatear, Hume's Warbler to the sensational Nutcracker, I can't remember having seen a more star-studded line-up of birds in my life.  Though there are many more colourful birds, more beautiful birds, bigger and more powerful and awe-inspiring birds, it's possible that I'll never see a better bird than the Nutcracker as long as I live; no hyperbole, just an honest appreciation of the feeling of seeing that wise forest guardian look at me under the dark green canopy in the lashing rain.

"High winds, northern sky will carry you away..."