May 2021 — Just A Bird

Rose-coloured Starling - Jaonneuse, 31 May 21

May would turn out to be the coldest May I can ever recall and the summer migrants just would not arrive. They stayed away, held up further south, until pockets of good weather appeared and then shot through en masse, mostly missed by me. For example I did not see a Swift on the patch until well into June, which is pretty weird. Also unusually, there was not really any decent rarities to go see during the month at all - a strange time it was.

The start of May though was still exciting because it was BIRD RACE 2021!! This was especially anticipated this year since it was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID. On the first day of the month I managed to do a wee recce around a few local sites - mainly to confirm that there was nothing there. So we were hopeful of a decent day but weren’t expecting numbers too special under the circumstances.

Actual frost on the ground at Pleinmont at the start of bird race day - Unprecedented scenes for Guernsey in May!!!

We started off in a different spot than usual as we thought we’d try a couple of different owl stakeouts. We failed with Long-eared but got a nice Barn Owl to start the day at 0520. This was then followed up by an hour at Pleinmont to try and catch any flyover first-lighters. There was clearly not much visible migration happening however, with Wheatear and a Yellow Wagtail being the only rewards. A bonus though was a Jackdaw feeding in the now-bare weedy corridor amongst the pigeons and doves, which is not seen there very often and usually requires a purposeful look on the cliffs later in the day.

We then headed east and pulled into the Tielles car park greeted by Ravens barking on the fence posts. We came here especially to search for a Short-eared Owl that had been seen regularly over the previous week or so but this ended up being the most exciting 15 minutes of the whole day. It didn’t take long before we saw a SEO, looking slightly incongruous, below us flying halfway down the cliff face. Wayne then got his ‘scope out, especially to look for shearwaters that we thought we could probably see in the calm conditions. However, the first birds he picked up was a group of 3 auks bobbing on the sea, which was a useful spot. Two of these birds were the unsurprising Razorbills but the third was clearly smaller and paler-headed. It took a few seconds of squinting to identify this bird as a bloney Puffin! This may not seem hugely remarkable, but in my 22+ years in Guernsey, this was the first time I had ever seen a Puffin from the Guernsey cliffs. It was totally unexpected. There are often a few sightings of seawatch fly-bys in autumn off the north coast, but a Puffin feeding off the south coast cliffs in spring is almost unprecedented.

We did then see a handful of Manx Shearwaters making their way past but then, suddenly straight out from the watchpoint was a Great Skua flying purposefully east parallel with the shore! Again, this was totally unexpected, a species we had never recorded on the race before and also one I had never seen off the south coast ever. Our minds blown, we made our way back to the west coast with 44 species and it was only about 0700.

Although rather buoyed from the previous stop we were realistic that there was not good numbers of land migrants around to boost our total. We made our way round the west coast bays and picked up useful species like Brent Goose and Greenshank at Perelle. At about 0740 we cut inland to visit Saumarez Park before the teds and freds came out in force. We managed to get the main targets there with Short-toed Treecreeper, Goldcrest, Long-tailed Tit and Great Spotted Woodpecker all showing themselves albeit briefly and fortunately for the latter.

A quick detour to Rue des Bergers to see the Cattle Egrets conveniently alongside cattle for easy locating and ID. We then went back to check a few more bays and we were quite successful with the waders - Turnstone at Vazon, Bar-tailed Godwit at L’Eree Shingle Bank and a Grey Plover on rocks at Rousse, still present there from my recce the day before. This was followed by Sandwich Tern at Fort Doyle and Sedge Warbler at Grand Pre and before long it was lunchtime and we were on 78 species, with a long afternoon of seeing not much more ahead of us.

The next stop was Track Marais to see a male Teal that I had discovered the day before that was lingering there unusually late into the spring, but other than that it was quiet at the site. After seeing two of the auks from the cliffs earlier, and with migrant numbers low, a boat trip to Herm would not be an efficient use of our time. However, the one auk that we were missing is the one that can often be seen in the Little Russell as the boat crosses over. So we positioned ourselves on the harbour wall and scanned with our scopes until we finally found a Guillemot or two on the sea at distance - 80 species by 1400.

It then gets to the time of day where much discussions occur about what to do next. Luckily, nowadays, social media can often make that decision for you, because a quick scroll revealed a report on Facebook of a Black Redstart at Portelet. We headed down there only to find it crawling with humans and we couldn’t see where this bird could be. After a while of presuming it had flown, it appeared on the rocks right below the kiosk, a stunning dark and red male Black Redstart, another new species for us on a Guernsey bird race, one which is usually long-gone by May.

As we were now at Pleinmont we thought another look around might tease something out. Wayne did find a female Common Redstart in the gorse but both Mark and I were too slow and missed it. We spent quite a bit of time trying to re-find it but it was to no avail and a species missed. Just round the corner however, a Ring Ouzel was found on the cliff-slope below the BBC field - species 82 at 1600.

Bullfinch was a species we were confident in getting and we found it in the Talbot Valley. Just at the same spot we saw a warbler flick through the roadside bushes and although it was presumably going to be the usual chiffie, we followed it up and caught sight of some orangey legs and it revealed itself as a Willow Warbler, a species we thought we were going to miss (much more difficult than you’d expect on a Guernsey bird race as the species races through the island in April, with hardly any continuing into May). As we were returning to the car I looked vertically upwards in case I could spot a Swift - now our biggest missing species. I thought I saw one through a small gap in the tall trees until I realised that this was actually a high-flying Hobby. Luckily it hung in the air long enough for one of the team to rush to join us after completing a micturatory-manoeuver behind a tree. This treble of ticks bumped us up to 85 species and it was now 1815.

Swift was now becoming a problem but we thought that if we walked around the Rue des Bergers/Grande Mare area for a while that was going to be as good a tactic as any. It did not seem as though it was going to happen until, just as we were leaving the golf course, Mark somehow spied one behind a tree as it quickly hurtled past us - 86 at 1840.

We were now really struggling to come up with any ideas but we chatted to a photographer who had been up at Mont Herault and who had seen a Whinchat up there. With no other ideas, we hurried to the spot and soon found the bird in the clifftop vegetation - 87 at 1925.

After this, we meandered our way along the west coast, stopping at various locations, but there was nothing new to be found. We positioned ourselves at Chouet as the sun went down to try and spot a Long-eared Owl. There was no sign until it was really quite dark until one appeared for Wayne and dashed through the bushes. Both Mark and I saw a bird but to say it was definitely a LEO would have been a little disingenuous so we left it off our final total.

87 species was a satisfying total and continues the upward trend after the low totals in the mid 2010s.

The rest of May was very quiet but it may have been also due to being very busy and not being able to get out in the field so much. On 8th May I had a quick visit to Pleinmont and saw Garden Warbler, Whinchat, Sedge Warbler and c.30 Wheatears in a short time indicating a pretty good arrival. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to search and by the next day, almost everything had cleared out. On 10th May there was a Greenshank at the Vale Pond but then I have nothing in my notebook until the last day of the month.

On 31st May my thoughts had already gone into insect mode and I spent an hour or so at lunchtime mooching round the Grand Pre. Whilst driving back I thought I’d have a quick stop at Jaonneuse beach because a few waders had been reported there recently and there was a flock of 10 Sanderling pottering along the shoreline. Whilst sat in the car I had a quick scan of the visible area and there on the tide-dumped vraic was a rather fabulous, pink and black Rose-coloured Starling!

This was rather odd as it was just under 12 months ago that I was sat in the same spot, looking at the same view and finding a Rosy Starling - heck, the bird was in almost the exact same place on the beach as last year’s bird! Whereas last year I had been actively searching for one, this year it was quite a surprise. I knew that there had been an influx into southern Europe but I had not heard of any coming further north yet. In fact this day saw the first sightings of the influx in the UK also.

I reached down for the camera, switched it on and looked back to see that the bird was not there. In fact it was nowhere in sight - it had literally disappeared. Perhaps it was just a ghost of last year’s bird - a time-slip - a glitch in the matrix!? A quick look around the area and there were groups of other starlings around but this was not with them. Then, as quickly as it vanished, the RCS appeared on top of a bare twig above the large Blackthorn patch opposite the tower, where I was able to get some photos.

It then disappeared again and after a while turned up on some bushes behind the golf club house and holiday homes, but much more distant. And then suddenly it was gone. I watched it fly far and south over the golf course and away, just before a few birders had arrived to see it. (What was quite likely the same bird was found in a garden a mile or so away later).

So a rather exotic end to a quiet spring.

Rose-coloured Starling - Jaonneuse, 31 May 21 - showing its crest

Black-horned Gem Soldierfly - Grand Pre, 31 May 21

Cassida nobilis - garden, 27 May 21 - a new species for me

Just A Bird

Just A Bird

Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

Just A Bird

Just A Bird