A big patch tick and Autumn Mothing

Summer migrant birds abruptly dried up by the end of September, as they take on their journey south to their wintering grounds. We now move into the 'finches and thrushes' end of Autumn, as we await the arrival of continental passerines.

The recent highlight though was not a passerine, but a very unexpected local scarcity! Gareth B and I caught up at Grimsbury Res post-work on 02/10, noting very little other than a late-ish Common Sandpiper. Strolling back to the car chatting, a dark shape the other side of the river, flying high-ish S/SE caught my eye. Expecting it to be a Cormorant, that regularly move backwards and forwards here, I was more than a bit surprised to see that classic shape of a Glossy Ibis in my bins! A few seconds view were enjoyed with no time for photos, before it was lost behind the trees. A brilliant patch tick and after Gareth's flyover back in 2024, one I never thought I'd get back. So pretty bloody chuffed really! My 157th species for Grimbo.

As a rule, opportunities to get the moth trap out in my garden at this time of year are few and far between, with cooler temperatures and generally more frequent bad weather. However, we've been lucky to have a decent run of more milder nights, giving me the chance to getting trapping and find a few new species.

Top of my list to get for some time has been the beautiful 'mint choc chip' coloured Merveille du Jour, a classic September / October moth. I was super pleased to get my very first one in the trap on the night of 23/09. What a beauty!

A good run of Clancy's Rustics and a couple of Vestals were other notable finds, in addition to more common fare.

Not from the moth trap, but Hummingbird Hawkmoths continued to visit the garden fairly frequently, right into the first week of October. What an impressive year it's been for them here.

Warm, insect-friendly weather was still to be found into October. Pleasingly, a stroll around Hinton Airfield on 04/10, delivered a number of pretty fresh Clouded Yellows, on a rough bit of ground at the southern end. These could prove to be my last of the year, crowning quite the year for butterflies!

Ardley Baird's

Ardley ERF Lagoon and adjacent quarry pits has been a regular local birding haunt of mine during the past 5 years, offering that rare local commodity - actual, real life wader habitat!

A fairly easy place to 'drop in on', on the way home from work, it can be pretty hit and miss. However, between myself and fellow regular 'Ardley slogger', Gareth Casburn, we've racked up a pretty decent wader list including Curlew & Wood Sandpiper, Little Stint, Spotted Redshank, Sanderling and most common passage wader species. Not to be sniffed at for this part of the world!

It's therefore shown it was possible for the site to pull in some decent waders and so plenty of times, we've speculated as to what juicy rare we may bump into there one day, with Pec Sand or Lesser Yellowlegs both previously mooted.

This September has seen an impressive number of vagrant, nearctic waders from cross the pond, as a result of persistent westerly winds. This certainly
piqued my interest and spurred me on to check Ardley and other potential, local sites just in case. 

Having given Grimsbury Res a good go, early on Sunday 20/09 with not a huge amount going on, I headed home to ready the kids for a family birthday lunch. A short while later I get a call from Gareth C. with the jaw-dropping news that he had found a probable Baird's Sandpiper. That call swiftly followed photos - oh my word, the most perfect, crisp juvenile Baird's indeed!!!

Having showered and dressed in no more than 5, hectic minutes, I groveled to my wife and kids, promising not to be too long and zoomed off on the 15 minute drive to Ardley!! I soon joined Gareth, relieved to get there in time to enjoy his amazing find - Oxfordshire's 1st Baird's Sandpiper no less! My 3rd Baird's and without a shadow of a doubt, the most enjoyable, seeing it on one of my local sites. Yes, it is incredibly gripping not to have found it myself, but I was super chuffed it was my fellow patcher! Even better it spent it's time on the closest bit of shoreline possible, allowing some wonderful views.    

Away from the excitement of the Baird's, it's been a slow month with little reward, for plenty of effort! But that is local patching in the Midlands!

Still, it's been a joy to encounter Clouded Yellows on a pretty regular basis. Hinton Airfield, has held a few and luckily, I've managed a few half decent photos on the rare occasions they settled for more than 2 seconds! If the sun was out though, I had no chance! Got to make the most of them as it could be many, many years until the next big Cloudie year!  

The airfield has also produced both Redstart and Wheatear, although very surprisingly I've just have not been able to connect with a local Whinchat, despite hammering suitable habitat at the airfield and elsewhere too! 

The garden butterfly season is just about continuing. Having only recorded them once before, I had a very unexpected succession of Brown Argus sightings, across a couple of warm days during the first week of September. Painted Ladies and Hummingbird Hawkmoths are still making occasional appearances.

I'm now hoping and praying I can get a Clouded Yellow on the garden list before the weather really starts to turn - won't get many better opportunities than this year!

Elsewhere, not much else to report other than still regular Green Sandpipers in several places and the odd juv Ringed Plover (including a very approachable bird at Grimsbury Res).

Autumn though is really getting going now and before too long, the first Redwings will arrive and vis mig will hopefully come to the fore. Mipits and Skylark movement is certainly in full swing!

Norfolk Bank Holiday birding

Both myself and Gareth B. arranged to head over to Norfolk for a couple of days ahead of the August Bank Holiday and catch up with our good Norfolk-based birding mate Johnny. 

The days leading up to our arrival saw a good, classic east coast fall of Pied Flys, Redstarts, Wrynecks etc, so while the winds had switched to SW by Saturday 29/08, there would surely be some good birding to be enjoyed and certainly better birding than back home!

We decided to kick about the Cley area for the Saturday 29/08 at least, with waders, passerines and the sea all in play. We met up at Cley Beach car park and started at North Hide. There were a decent cluster of chats on the way over, with up to 10 Wheatear and 4 Whinchats along the fences, as well as several Yellow Wags.

North Scrape was pretty good with an adult Little Gull, at least 3 juv Curlew Sandpiper, juv Little Stint, juv Ruff, 2 Greenshank, 3 Common Sands, a good number of Dunlin, 1 juv LRP and a couple of Swift overhead- a solid start! 4 Grey Herons headed E offshore, as well as a/the adult Little Gull and a juv Med Gull. Singles of Sanderling and Pintail were on the nearby sea pool.

We then all agreed a stroll up Blakeney Point, to at least the Hood was worth it, to see if we could dig something out. Wryneck was reported in that general area, so that could at least prove a good sweetener if we couldn't find anything ourselves.

We were soon onto a couple of clusters of Wheatear, a Willow Warbler and a Chiffchaff. The big channel held a few waders including moulting Barwit & Grey Plover, as well as a calling Whimbrel, Ringed Plover and plenty of Redshank and Curlew. We had a good bash around the Hood, encountering a Whinchat and a lovely Tree Pipit that showed nicely for a brief while.

Soonafter, a/the Wryneck flew up out of some Sueda close to Johnny. After a couple of bang average flight views, I went on to get some decent views of it as it went about it's business, showing a surprising willingness to perch out in the open, rather than diving deep into the Sueda.

It was now getting a bit drizzly and so we decided to head back towards coastguards along the beach, rather than press on to the plantation. In a bit of light drizzle, this proved a nice move with a striking juvenile Caspian Gull on the beach, together with a juv Caspiany thing, most likely of mixed parentage. A couple of Black Terns were offshore too, joining the melee of gulls and Sandwich / Common Terns. The number of Common Terns in the area were unusually high, with apparently as many as 300 in recent days! 

We got back to the car and headed round to the visitor centre for a coffee before finishing the day in Dauke's Hide for the evening, overlooking Pat's Pool & Simmonds. It proved to be a very enjoyable hour and a half or so. Highlights included c13 Little Stint (1 adult, the rest juvs), 2 Wood Sandpiper, 1 Spotted Redshank, at least 2 juv Caspian Gulls and an adult Yellow-Legged Gull.

A fairly leisurely start on Sunday, having completed over 20,000 steps the previous day! It started well as I was finally able to enjoy my first ever Wasp Spider - this one had been hanging out in Johnny's Norwich garden for quite a while! Really hadn't anticipated how big a female Wasp Spider is - an absolute wopper of a spider and just stunning too. Even better than I expected!

We had plotted to head across to see the Black-Winged Kite, but in the end decided on heading back to Cley and giving the sea a go as the wind was anticpiated to swing a bit NW.

In reality the sea wasn't great - though nice to see both Bonxie and Arctic Skua, as well as a distant, possible Pom Skua. A few Gannets, a couple of flyby juv Caspian Gull, a few groups of Teal, Knot, Dunlin and Grey Heron was pretty much it! North Scrape produced 1 juv Curlew Sandpiper, 4+ juv Little Stint, 1 juv Wood Sandpiper, a distant Hobby, 9 Spoonbills flying into Pat's Pool, plenty of hirundines overhead and generally the same stuff as previous.

We wandered on to the East Bank and it was good to see a couple of very busy Wall butterflies. Arnold's Marsh held a few Spoonbill, but not not a lot else, however we did get good views of a couple of Hobby overhead. The walk back to the car added a kettle of 12 Buzzards drifting overhead. At this point Johnny headed home and Gareth and I popped round to the East Bank car park and Walsey Hills before we headed home. A few commoner species were added to the weekend list, but nothing spectacular. The sun did draw out a few butterlflies including several more Wall, Small Heath, Small Copper and Common Blue. Gareth also picked out a nice Willow Emerald Damselfly. That drew to a close a fun couple of days catching up and enjoying some rather more eventful birding than back home!!