The choice this morning was head to Dungeness for the Black-crowned Night Heron which would have been a lifer or Church Norton to have a crack at the Wryneck reported yesterday! The weather forecast for Dunge was fairly poor and I didn't fancy driving 2 hours to get soaked to see a dot in a distant tree, if I was lucky!😢😀 so Church Norton it is!!
I arrived at half seven, word of warning they are doing some work on the reserve and half the car park is roped off, extraneous information you may think, however it may become important later😀😲!! I headed out into the harbour full of youthful enthusiasm or my approximation of it!! Was fairly quiet a few flyover Curlews and some Swallows went through as I headed to the Severals (not sure where that name comes from?)
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| Curlew |
I wandered around the beach, heading east scouring the usual areas where I have seen them before, couple of Chiffchaffs, a few Stonechats and at the far end just before the small wood a couple of Wheatears appeared but no sign of the target, not a surprise they are notoriously elusive! There was a regular stream of Meadow Pipits heading east and small groups of Swallow every now and then. I gave the sea a quick scan but seemed fairly quiet apart from the occasional Curlew flying along the shoreline! Thought I had a quick glimpse of a Dartford Warbler in a gorse patch, but so brief difficult to be sure, a couple of Cetti's Warblers called but no views, quelle surprise!😱😁
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| Chiffchaff |
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| Linnet |
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| Curlew Silhouette |
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| Wheatear |
Only four pics of Wheatears this week, trust me there could have been a lot more, they were very cooperative!
So I continued up and down, headed out onto the spit, Green Woodpecker here and another couple of Wheatears, lot of Meadow Pipits going through but none settled close! The Green Woodpecker weren't close either!! There were a couple of Roe Deer in the Severals as well!
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| Roe Deer |
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| Distant Green Woodpecker |
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| Less cooperative Wheatear |
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| Roe Deer |
I headed back up the beach still no Wryneck all the same as before the Wheatears posed again! Defeated after 2 and a half solid hours of scouring, I decided to go and have a look for waders at the benches. The walk back produced worse views of a Green Woodpecker, a stunning male Kestrel, which was just a bit too distant for decent pics and a Curlew/Whimbrel which I think is a Whimbrel but may not be!! Opinions welcome!
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| Wheatear |
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| There was never only gone be 4 pics 😀 But these are the last!! |
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| At least you can see it's Green! |
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| Curlew |
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| Kestrel, shame it wasn't a tad closer |
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| Whimbrel, seems to be a washed out head pattern and short bill, or maybe a juvenile Curlew? |
At this point I discovered my Scope has broken again 😡😱😢 Same problem with the connection to the Tripod plate that Swaro supposedly fixed a few months ago!! Could this morning get any worse!! Waders were mainly Redshanks, Dunlin, Grey Plover and Turnstones, the tide was out so everything a bit distant and with no scope it was all fairly difficult !! A Peregrine went through and put everything up which was quite handy!
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| Grey Plover |
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| Grey Plover and a couple of Turnstone |
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| Peregrine seems quite dark underneath? |
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| Grey Plover and Turnstone |
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| High Tide |
So defeated I headed back to the motor, the car park was full, so full in fact that I couldn't get the car out!! Hmmm! 😡😈That extra info at the start makes sense now huh😂 Sitting there I checked Birdguides, Wryneck at Church Norton at the Severals! WTF! The surprise of this was I'd only seen 2 other birders and neither of them mentioned seeing it!! I'm not going to lie, dear Blog readers, at this point there was a bit of swearing, in fact that is a lie there was a lot of swearing!!😂 So I dragged myself out of the car, that wasn't going anywhere anyway and headed back out to the harbour!! Dogged Persistence is my middle name!!
I arrived back at "the Severals" there were two (different) birders there, they hadn't seen it!! One however had spoken to the guy who had seen it! It had apparently flown into the bush they were sitting near!! 20 minutes ago!! Now as an experienced Wryneck hunter, I have encountered this before, people stare into a bush for 20 minutes meanwhile the bird sneaks out and is happily feeding 30 yards away, so I wandered, 30 yards later it flushed out of the path ahead of me! Result! Obviously this is just the start of the problems, the bird is tricky, disappearing for long periods and exceptionally difficult to get close to, now regular readers will know about my Ninja like tendencies but the Birding Gods seem to have turned on me, to be fair they've been fairly kind this year!, but every time I got close to the bugger it was flushed by, dogwalkers, twice, a jogger, a Sparrowhawk, a Kestrel, a frigging Robin and twice by Stonechats !!! Still we persevered and all 3 of us had reasonable views. Very impressive Scope work by the birder with a scope, picking the bird buried in a Hawthorn Bush 30 odd meters away!!
Anyway my best and I use the word in it's loosest possible sense, pics below!
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| Wryneck |
During our wanderings the other birder, yes I forget to ask their names, you knew I would😏 saw the Dartford Warbler and I had another brief view as well, couple of Common Whitethroats about as well, plus the Stonechats, one of which on closer examination turned out to be a Whinchat, which could teach the Wryneck a thing or two about posing!!
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| Kestrel flushing Wryneck! |
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| Common Whitethroat |
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| Whinchat |
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| Common Whitethroat |
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| Stonechat |
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| Whinchat |
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| Common Redshank |
After six hours, staring into bushes enough was enough, especially as a Whitethroat had just flushed the bugger again!! I headed home, fairly happy, especially as I could now just about squeeze out of the car park and at time of writing the Heron hasn't been reported!
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