Postscript: The Rosy Glow

An English pub sometime in the future. In this little fantasy our group of birders have met to compare their diaries from 2008 when they all spent a year trying to see 200 species in Poole Harbour. Lit with lanterns, our faces could be as easily from 1830 as 2030. Shaun has a thick diary in front of him. Ian Lewis has just brought a round of drinks. Nick Hopper, Mark and Mo are sitting at one end, Kevin, Terry and several new faces at the other. 

Shaun: “I’ve brought my 2008 diary down. How about you lot? I was thinking about what motivated me to do a year list that year. I think I just wanted to join the Poole Harbour 200 club.”

Nick, who has brought his notebooks: “It kicked off for me at 3:50 in the morning with a Robin singing, and unless there was somebody here even sadder than me it put my yearlist at the top of the table. A position that I never relinquished!” He looks out of the window at the rain. Elderly masons are going into the lodge on the other side of the road. “My January 1st daylist went well and I reached a creditable 116, very close to the winter harbour record at the time. I remember hearing Woodlark singing in the dark at East Holme, and seeing male and female Hen Harrier on the deck, Barn Owl, Firecrest, Bewick’s Swan, Spot Red, Spoonbill, Velvet Scoter, Long-tailed Duck, Kingfisher and Woodcock. Now if that’s not an advert to come to Poole Harbour for a winter day’s birding then I don’t know what is.”

Shaun, grey, with a discreet hearing aid, nods sagely and starts to read aloud from his diary in a Geordie accent: “Tuesday January 1st, 2008 Poole Harbour Bird Boat. For once, Captain Constantine’s bird boat was greeted with calm waters and clear skies. Poole Harbour is really on the up and there were birds everywhere. We were all there to start our friendly big year, all except one (nods towards Nick). We saw Sandwich Tern, 11 Spoonbills – that was before they started to breed – 6 or 7 Long-tailed Ducks, and 3 Eiders.”

Mark: “Yes, it was a good start to the year but things got a bit frustrating after that. I remember desperately trying to catch up with your Egyptian Goose at East Holme, Kevin.”

Mo: “Without luck.” 

Kevin: “Did you see the Cattle Egret?”

Mo: “No, we didn’t see that either.”

Mark: “We did manage to see Goosander, though, after sneaking about on the south side of the Wareham Channel one day. There were still conifers covering the heath back then, rather than today’s biomass crops of dense brushwood. But we lost ground again when we missed the 12th January bird race, flying to Amsterdam instead.”

Nick: ”I don’t know why you had to go to the Dutch Birding Day. We had a real chance of getting 120 species that day and a new harbour record, not to mention adding valuable species to the year list, species you needed to keep in the hunt. I did begin to wonder how committed you really were to a year list. Weren’t you worried we’d beat your record?”

Mark: “I was encouraging you with a bit of a head start.”

Shaun: “What about the Pink-footed Goose at Swineham? Was that before or after the bird race?”

Nick: “That was a couple of days after. I remember seeing it asleep on one of the gravel pit islands, which was a bit of an anti-climax. It looked pretty plastic really, but a tick’s a tick!”

Shaun: “I seem to remember there was a bit more excitement involved in your next tick, which none of the rest of us saw. Holton Heath, 17th January…” 

Nick, gloating: “Oh yeah, you mean James’s Franklin’s Gull. Yeah, you could call it exciting, it damn near killed me! After driving like a maniac then nearly giving myself a heart attack from running, I just got there in time to see it before it lifted off and flew into the murk, never to be seen again.”

Shaun: “It wasn’t the only good gull. According to my diary we had the 8th Ring-billed Gull for Lytchett Bay on 16th March. I distinctly remember you playing the daft laddie that day.”

Nick: “Who, me?” 

Shaun: “We were both watching the bird when Kevin rang you to say he’d seen it on the pager, and did you know about it? You had obviously forgotten to ring him, and I remember you squirming as you made out that you hadn’t heard the news, then thanked him for ringing, before quickly legging it before he got there.”

Kevin, smiles and shakes his head.

Nick: “Yeah, sorry about that Kevin. I’m glad you got there in time to see it. I did make up for it by telling everybody about a private and hitherto unknown guaranteed Golden Pheasant viewing area. Doing survey work in the harbour gave me an ‘access all areas’ pass, and one day I was at Goathorn counting waders when I realised that from a certain position, I could see to the back of the lawn on Furzey Island. I set up the scope and immediately found two stunning males.”

Steve, just arriving and pulling up a chair: “Well that would have been good gen if we had been allowed in.”

Nick, with a cheeky smile on his face: “Come on Steve, don’t be like that!” He cups his hand and whispers “Bad loser” to Mark, then turns back to Steve. “I didn’t hear you complain a couple of days later when I rang you with a Balearic Shearwater that I had found lingering in Studland Bay. Wasn’t that the first March record for Dorset? Anyway, it certainly was a cracker, showing really well. I remember at the time I was just scanning the bay for grebes when it glided through my scope. It wasn’t too long afterwards that you found a Nightingale at Old Harry, was it Steve? I don’t remember you being in a hurry to get the news out about that.”

Steve, looking quite sprightly considering his age: “That’s just because I didn’t see it. I remember I’d just heard my first Lesser Whitethroat of the spring – one of my favourite UK birds, that – and then a Nightingale started singing in the front wood. I tried to flush it, but it refused to break cover.” 

Mark: “Why do you make such a big effort to see these birds when you’ve already identified them by their song?”

Steve: “It’s just ‘my approach’. I will tick things however identified, but for a significant list I like to have seen the bird.”

Nick, smirking: “Yeah but your year list wasn’t actually that significant was it, Steve!” 

Mark: “How about viz mig. You have to use calls then?”

Steve: “It wasn’t an issue that year and anyway, Nightingale was the only bird that I didn’t see. I would have preferred not to have ever seen crap pigeon. I really don’t like crap pigeons.” Screwing his face up at the thought of feral pigeon, he takes a swig of lemonade and lime.

Nick: “You’d have hated identifying the Phantom Crossbills that me and Kevin had in the old Rempstone Forest.”

Steve: “You can’t count those.”

Mark: “You can now. They were split by the BOU. Not that there’s any hope of seeing those again, now that the pines have all been felled and replaced with biomass crops.” 

Shaun: “Hardly anyone had heard of biomass boilers then, now we are all heating our homes and workplaces with them.”

Nick: “I’m not. Living on the edge of the heath, I’m burning peat.”

Shaun: “It’s illegal.” 

Nick: “It’s not in Stoborough, and it’s a lot easier than chopping wood.”

Terry: “Well it’s illegal at Canford. My staff spend a lot of time chasing off illegal peat diggers. That and catching poachers”.

Shaun, returning to his diary: “So, on the 5th May, Nick, you saw a Garganey on Swineham and that took you to 183. Steve, you were at 175. You two” (points to Mark and Mo) “were at 170, Kevin you were at 165, I was on 162, Iain Prophet 155 and Graham 150.”

Kevin: “Let’s have a look.” Shaun passes the diary. “I’ve been trying to gauge why I stopped at the end of May. I thought it was ‘cos I missed a load of stuff when I was in Spain, but looking at these records that wasn’t the case. I think it was actually a combination of work and holidays. I missed the East Holme Woodchat ‘cos of this. When I got back from Scotland, I had another busy week at work and no opportunities for skiving. So I missed two thirds of May. Then things wound down for the summer, and I was way off the pace. Naffed off, this is likely to be when I gave in. I think I used the excuse that now I was County Recorder, I needed to be showing my face around the county more, which of course was complete bollocks!”

Paul Morton (one of the younger new faces): “Nick, wasn’t it in May that you had your eagle? I often wondered what happened there.”

Nick, rather reluctantly takes up the story: “It was just after 1pm and quite a nice day, so decided to stop and do some raptor scanning at Hartland Moor. After literally a couple of minutes, I picked up this raptor being mobbed by jackdaws or something. Given this, I assumed it was going to be a buzzard but when I got my bins on it I realised that the smaller birds were the buzzards! What the hell was that thing they were mobbing? It was massive…!” He fishes out another A6-sized Alwych notebook. “By the 12th I had started my second notebook of the year, something which in the past I could have taken a year or two to fill, but I really was a man on a mission!”

Paul: “Did you decide what it was?”

Mark: “It was the immature sea eagle that had been hanging around all winter in Hampshire.”

Shaun: “Nick didn’t think the description was good enough, so he decided to submit it as an ‘eagle sp’, Paul. There was another guy just down the road at Wareham Moors who also saw it. He thought it was a White-tailed Eagle. And anyway Kevin really packed in because of my Woodchat. He’s as good as admitted it. I remember it as if it was yesterday. I’d had a late start. Just about to go shopping, ignoring the previous evening’s Little Bittern at Lodmoor. Checked Birdguides just to make sure it was not showing well. It wasn’t. But then I read ‘Portland – Thrush Nightingale, singing by the Obs’! Even though I knew I shouldn’t, off I went, arriving one hour after it went silent. Off to Lodmoor, no sign of Little Bittern, Red-rumped Swallow or Golden Oriole. All Dorset ticks, all had been seen that morning and there were more birders than birds. Decided to drive to Arne Moors to look for my own birds. As I drove past East Holme, something said, ‘Go and check the fields.’ Thoughts of White Stork seemed optimistic. Stopped at the first pull in. An egret with the cattle! Wondered if it might be another Cattle Egret. No, it was a Little, but what was that on the fence in front of me? A cracking male Woodchat Shrike! All the Poole year listers rushed back from Portland and it was enjoyed by all.”

Steve: “I wouldn’t have given up, although I did get a bit frustrated with your Stone-curlew, Nick.” 

Nick: “Yes, that was one of my most unexpected finds. Given that it was nearly June, I figured my best bet would be to cover as much ground as possible because birds at this time of year would more than likely be singing anyway. I decided to take my bike and start off by cycling around Ballard. This proved to be easier said than done as it was very hilly, and the grass was long. More pertinently, it was wet! So cycling turned out to be much more of a struggle than I thought. I was about half way round when I heard this curlew-type call. I stopped and could see this bird heading toward me, and I remember being astonished to see a short bill. It was a Stone-curlew! That was a great moment. It flew to the ploughed fields where I lost it in the dip, but as it had stopped calling by this time I presumed it had gone down. Some quick phone calls and then I thought it best to wait for the cavalry. You lot arrived,” (pointing to Mark, Mo and Steve,) “but we couldn’t refind it. You didn’t appear to be in the best of moods, Steve. I remember you saying that we should ban people from coming out on week days when others don’t have a chance of twitching.”

Steve: “I had a massive amount of work I had to do, whereas you were full time bird surveying. I remember saying at the time that it wasn’t really a level playing field.”

Nick: “You managed to get there ok so what are you moaning about?”

Steve: “In the end, you do have to consider chasing things when you’d rather be finding your own birds. The reality of year-listing is the harder you try, the more times you are going to go for something that simply isn’t there.”

Shaun, looking in the diary: “Considering you had packed in your year list, Kevin, you found some great birds. Pec Sand for a start.”

Kevin: “Yeah, I was meant to be taking the firm’s banking to Nat West in Broadstone but somehow ended up in Wareham when I found that. After visiting the bank, I thought I’d sneak in a bit of birding. Walking out to Swineham, I thought I may as well count the Great Crested Grebes, and there it was.” 

Shaun: “I executed a smash and grab raid at Swineham that evening, replicating behaviour I have deplored in others for years. I left work at 8:15 after a late meeting. Arrived at the rugby club at 8:30. My bike was strategically placed in the boot, and I was soon tearing past the Bestwall Park signs prohibiting breathing, amongst most other human activities. Ditched the bike at the sluice and was hurrying along the top bank when I met three young fishermen who asked if I’d come to see the Pectoral Sandpiper! Yes, I replied, asking if they knew where it was. Hey! The hour was late and it had been a long day… One of them kindly took me to the exact spot. Pointing helpfully, he said, ‘It was just on the end of that spit against the clump of rushes when the last bloke saw it.’ I raised my bins and there it was. Excitedly I thanked him, mounted the scope, focussed, just in time to see it fly out of view. The joys of Poole Harbour listing.”

Steve: “The most surprising call of the year I got was from Peter Williams about a probable Lesser Grey Shrike – and did I want to check it out? Silly question. After a short search through neighbouring fields, it was relocated on the now famous yellow farm machinery.” 

Shaun: “Sunday August 3rd , 2008. I was watching England play South Africa at Edgbaston when Steve called to say a ‘grey’ shrike had been found at Corfe Meadows.”

Mark: “That was my favourite. I always like major twitches and that was in such a lovely spot. I’ve been down there a lot since.”

Shaun, reading from his diary again: “Wednesday September 10th, 2008 was my red letter day. At 07:55 I found a juv Rose-coloured Starling at Lytchett Bay. Unfortunately the bird is on private land. It was last seen at 08:13 when it flew towards Holton Lee (also private in those days, you could only get in with a permit) among a small group of about 20 Starlings. In my excitement I nearly forgot to mention that an Osprey caught a fish just after 07:30. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but Mark and Terry gripped me off with a Black Tern on my local patch tonight, a species that still eludes me at Lytchett.”

Kevin, who has now fished out his own diary: “Wryneck was fun. Graham rang me to say he had just flushed a one off the path that goes up to the top hide. I can’t remember it all, but I spent a good while looking. Then on Sunday 14th September, Neil Gartshore found another one on Ballard and Nick & I tried for well over an hour to relocate it. Nick spotted Shaun cycling up the field towards us, rang him & suggested he moved over to the grockle-free left hand side of the long field, as nobody had walked down that edge for about 45 min. Less than 1 minute & 40 yds of cycling & Shaun had flushed the Wryneck. We raced down & it showed really well, sitting fully in the open for about 5 minutes.” 

Nick: “That was 199, and I think it was the next day that I hit the magic 200 with Little Stint on Brownsea.”

Steve: “I missed the Wryneck but caught up a bit while taking a leak in the bushes at Studland. I heard a flock of Long-tailed Tits, but the second bird I looked at was a Yellow-browed Warbler, which performed for the next 45 seconds before diving into cover.”

Mark: “I think that’s when it all went badly wrong. Mo and I had missed that, and then on October 7th I had just got my bum on a train seat as it set off for London when my phone rang and I could see from the display that it was Graham Armstrong. I said, ‘Please don’t tell me it’s a good bird Graham.’ ‘I’m afraid it is Mark. I’m watching a juvenile Sabine’s Gull sitting on the water here off Branksome.’ That hurt!” 

Kevin: “Seems like there were only a few birds around that day, but those that were being seen were quality. I missed the juv Sabine’s but had great looks at a Leach’s Petrel at ten past one, slowly moving west.”

Shaun: “Then I saw a Sooty Shearwater.”

Mark: “Which would have been a Poole Harbour life bird and you all gave me a ring. Still, it could have been worse. Nick was getting the same gripping phone calls whilst on Scilly. I seriously thought about retiring from birding altogether, but I remember that you, Nick, couldn’t eat,” (Nick is looking very uncomfortable) “and had to come home early from the Scillies to see the doctor. Mind you, I reckon if you found a Shore Lark on Studland beach while I was on a train to London tomorrow, that would be the end of me.”

Nick, getting up to go to the loo: “I’ll see what I can do!”

Mark, turning to Paul and the new faces: “Poor old Nick then went extremely quiet and we only be saw him here and there in the odd place around the harbour. He kept himself very much to himself, just a nod, no conversation. He didn’t come down the pub and we started to talk seriously about him.”

Shaun, being a Newcastle United fan, had experienced these feelings before: “He was depressed.” 

Everybody nods solemnly.

Nick, having returned to hear the end of the conversation: “Still, by the 3rd of December I was back into it. I was at the middle viewpoint by the main road at East Holme counting the Greylags, as there seemed to be rather a lot, when Iain Prophet rang to say he was at Swineham and had just seen the back end of 3 wild swans heading west. He thought they looked like Whoopers and was wondering if I was out and about. Just as he’d finished getting the words out I caught the back end of the same 3 Swans, still going west. I told him that I was going to the bridge on the off chance that they had come down. On arrival, things didn’t look promising, until a swan walked out from behind one of those shooters screens. I put the bins up and hey presto it had yellow in its bill. Not only that, but it had the right pattern for a year tick! The other two soon followed it out so I called back. ‘Iain get your arse down here. They’ve landed and they’re Whoopers!’”

Kevin, reading from his diary: “7th December. This morning I was tempted away from the Harbour by a report of a possible Rough-legged Buzzard at Tadnoll Heath. It was beautifully crisp and frosty on the heath, with temperatures dipping to -5°C, but nothing interesting showed up raptor-wise, so I opted for a walk at Swineham. The walk out along the pits was pleasant. The freeze had persuaded a Water Rail to feed out in the open and a Snipe did the same, while 4 DEFRA-dodging Ruddy Ducks were also merrily swimming around and not looking in the least bit like they fancied a holiday with their cousins in Spain.

Pausing at the spot where I had located the Pectoral Sandpiper back in July (something that I now do unfailingly on every visit), I scanned across the water to a group of Tufted Ducks bobbing about by the island in the middle of the pit. There amongst them was something different – a duck with a prominent white eye-ring, tri-coloured bill pattern and a squat shape. I instinctively thought ‘Ring-necked Duck’. However, I’d only previously seen drakes of this species and some of the features I could see didn’t quite tally with my mental picture of a female bird.

I rang Shaun and talked him through my doubts. He quickly dispelled them and said he was on his way. Phone calls and texts then flew out to make sure everyone else knew about the bird. After what seemed like an age of standing on the seawall waiting for others to arrive, Shaun rang back – he had been watching the bird with Nick for the past 5 minutes from further back along the pit. Speedily making my way over to Shaun and Nick, I was just in time to see the duck waddle out onto a straw bale that was floating in the water, revealing a distinct lack of leg rings.”

Looking up from his diary: “For you lot, this bird was a valuable year tick at a time of year when things were winding down. For me it was my 187th harbour species that year, and left me pondering what could have been had I not wound down my year-listing back in May.”

Nick, changing the subject: “I was having a spot of lunch with Claire at the Holmebridge pull in. It’s always a favourite place to stop, as you can look up and down the valley whilst eating. On this occasion lunch didn’t get finished. I looked up just in time to see this large bird flying beyond the trees with a very large pale wing flash and a dark trailing edge. ‘What the **** was that?’ I said to Claire. The rhetorical question is always answered. ‘I don’t know, do I.’ Although Claire is a non-birder, I always manage to say something like, ‘Did you see that?’ or ‘What the hell was that?’ Anyway, what it appeared to be was a Great Bustard, but the problem was that I got a very brief view, and there was a record number of other large birds with pale wing flashes and dark trailing edges kicking around, i.e. Greylag Geese. It wasn’t a Greylag, was it? I was convinced it was a bustard, but the nag was the size just didn’t seem to ring true. My anxiety didn’t last long, as the bird made another flypast, this time in full view straight down the middle of the valley. ‘Shit, it is a Bustard!’ followed by, ‘Shit, it’s got a wing tag!’” 

Shaun: “I was out looking for Mark’s flyby Whoopers from the day before when I bumped into you, Nick”.

Nick: “Of course, it had gone by then.”

Steve: “Not that either of you could tick it.”

Nick: “I didn’t mind not ticking it. It was a fantastic bird to see. It then came back and turned out to be quite a small female, which is probably why it didn’t seem as impressive as I thought it should have done. I photographed the bird and got the tag number, red with a white 28 on it. Luckily Shaun hadn’t gone too far and was also able to get great views.” 

Kevin: “…which brought us to mid afternoon on New Year’s Eve, when I was heading down to Poole to pick up a friend from the train station. Being early, I thought I’d pop past Poole Park to have a squint at the lake. I parked up near the ‘Yellow browed Warbler corner’ and had a scan across the water. The usual assortment of swans, geese and gulls were present. As my bins reached the area near the model boat zone, I found a small flock of Goldeneye, with an attendant group of Black-headed Gulls. One of the gulls made me do a double take, and I couldn’t quite believe I was looking at a fine drake Smew.

Most of you had a fighting chance of getting down to the lake before dusk and gaining a priceless final year tick of 2008. I had a choice between keeping an eye on the bird for you lot and then picking up a very grumpy friend or leaving and hoping it stayed put. I went for my friend, and by the time I arrived back home all your negative phone calls began to arrive. It was nowhere to be seen. I got back in the car and raced down to Poole Park but you were right, it wasn’t there.

The light was beginning to fade and I was on the verge of giving up, when Nick called. He’d refound it off nearby Baiter Point. We all redeployed to Baiter, and there was a collective cheer as we got onto the bird. I seem to remember you doing a little jig in the car park Shaun!”

Shaun, beaming: “I’d made it to 200.”

Nick: “And I’d got 210, a new record for the harbour.”

Shaun: “In all there were 225 species recorded. There were 3 species of BBRC rarities: 14 Cattle Egret including 6 together, the Franklin’s Gull, and the Lesser Grey Shrike. And there were 14 Dorset rarities. These also included my Leach’s Petrel, the 3 Whooper Swans, the Pink-footed Goose, Kevin’s Ring-necked Duck and Nick’s White-tailed Eagle. Then there was Kevin’s Pectoral Sandpiper, two Ring-billed Gulls, Grahams Sabine’s Gull, a Willow Tit, and my own Woodchat Shrike and Rose-coloured Starling. A Honey Buzzard and a Red-footed Falcon were also seen in the harbour but we all missed those. I worked out that 74% of these birds were found by just the 7 birders participating in the year listing, which goes some way to show that concentrated effort on a patch (even one as large as Poole Harbour) can produce results.”

Mark: “I can add a bit more to that. You remember Martin Cade’s comments on county rarities in the bird report, when he pointed out that between 1983 and 1992 Poole only had 6% of the rarities?”

Shaun: “I remember you telling me about how much it wound you up.”

Mark: “Well, if you take 1999 to 2008 and count up the finds of all the county rarity hunters, there were 135 BB rarities. Working out the figures, Portland dropped from 41% down to 35%, Weymouth and Christchurch are much the same at 18% and 17% while Poole more than doubled, going from 6% to 13%. Even more encouragingly, if we take the years 2006-2008, there were 20 rare birds found in Dorset. Of these, 20% were in Poole and only 15% found on Portland, which is surprising considering its geographic advantage, the presence of a ringing station, and them having such a large numbers of observers in such a tiny recording area.”