January 8th
A day's twitching with Clark (Rich) Griswold and non-Birdforum member Rob started at half six in the morning at Robs and ended about 12 hours later at the same place. In between Rich did a lot of driving in not always nice conditions for which I'm very grateful.
You always hope for an owl from the car or something in these situations but we were in England before we had anything more than a heard only Robin on the trip list. We started out a Barrow Gurney for the very reliable Long Tailed Duck. I'd already seen a female this year but a drake is always good to see even if it was only a year tick for Rob. Next up was Chew Valley Lake for a fairly distant redhead smew that we got good scope views of just before another carloard of birders turned up just as it was flushed out of sight. Time to head properly south.
After a lot of country lanes we ended up at Slapton Lea, a great place that combines a largeish body of freshwater and a nice beach separated only by the road. I'd been there twice before but it was a new site for Rob and Rich and a great place to bird.
We parked and got out of the car only to have the laughing gull circling very low directly over our heads, its grey wings and long beak really obvious. Absolutely brilliant to arrive at a twitch in a great location and have nothing to do beyond enjoy the bird. It soon settled on the sand about 30 feet away from us periodically giving us close flybys. We eventually actually got round to getting the scopes out and soon added a bunch of seabirds to the trip and year list.
The hide at the other end of the beach had a ring necked duck so we paid a quick visit there before heading back north.
We had a bunch of traffic and very hard rain on the journey, stopping occasionally to try and get Rich a fieldfare amongst the redwing flocks we saw and to check out a totally ghostly pale buzzard that we couldn't string into anything else.
We eventually got to Colyford Common where yesterday people had been managing Isabelline Wheatear and Eastern Yellow Wagtail in the same shot. There was a big crowd there, mainly for wagtail as the wheatear has been around for a while but the wheatear was the only one of the star birds to show. And show it did, feeding very actively, preening and positioning itself on various lookout points. It's not as pretty as a Northern Wheatear and I'm sure I'll see loads of them in Romania in the summer but it was a lovely bird to watch and it really made up for a pretty moribund, huddled out of the rain one I ticked at cley a few years back.
The wagtail would have been nice but like the Izzy it was only a year tick, albeit one that might be hard to obtain and I was quite happy with two out of three of the star birds on offer. Excellent company, a decent supporting cast of year ticks and twitching without putting any miles on the car. An excellent day.
77 Smew
78 pheasant
79 Laughing Gull
80 gannet
81 kittiwake
82 shag
83 ring necked duck
84 Great black backed gull
85 Isabelline Wheatear +
86 kestrel
87 peregrine
88 meadow pipit
89 curlew
90 water pipit +
91 Little egret
92 common scoter
3 Roe Deer
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Birds 92 Mammals 3 Herp 0 Butterflies 0 Total 95 Lifers 1