Ring Ouzel Fabulousness

Sometimes the stars just align...

I was in a coffee shop a few days ago, when I spotted a friend I hadn't seen for over a year.  Popping over to her table, we had a lovely natter.  Then she commented that it was very odd - she had only thought of me this morning when a strange bird had turned up in her garden.  I asked her about the bird...

"It was the size of a blackbird, just like a blackbird really, but had a big white patch on its chest.  I had a look in the bird books and I think it's a ringed ouzlett." She said.

Of course, up my heart-rate went, but I tried to keep calm and consider that it could just be one of our local leucistic blackbirds. "I have a dodgy picture that I can send to you, I took it on my phone."  She continued.  Heart rate a little higher.  The picture arrived an hour later.  Heart rate through the roof!

taken by my friend with her phone

She gave me her address and I hastily checked the boundary of the 100 area to see if it was tickable for the Warwick 100 list.  Ack!  about 100 yards outside.  Frustrating not to be able to get it on our list, but still a great record for Warwickshire (only the fifth ever winter rouzel, apparently).

I couldn't get away from work/life for a couple of days but, yesterday, I received a message to say he was in the garden again.  Having broken up from school for a mere ten minutes, I hotfooted it to the address and hid, shivering, in my kind friend's garden for an hour.   I'd only ever seen one ring ouzel before; on a birding trip to Dungeness some years ago, with Jack.  That one was flighty and a long distance away.  But here this one was, right above me in a rowan tree, an absolute beauty of a bird. He'd eat for a couple of minutes, fly off and return almost exactly eight minutes later.  

Hmmmm, I thought.  I wonder which direction he's flying in... 

A bit of following the flight path and peering down the road and my mood lifted even more - he was flying straight into the Warwick 100 area as part of his circuit!  Bird number 112 for the year and an amazing, if chilly hour spent.

Thanks so much to my non-birding friend for taking an interest and telling me about the 'strange' bird.  She doesn't want her address given out, so apologies to people who I know would want to have seen him.  But it just shows that some brilliant birds can turn up in the most unlikely of places!

  

taken by Lizzy

Birding as a team in isolation - by Lizzy Bradbury

There is no doubt that I live in one of the worst places in the whole of the UK to see birds.  As far from the coast as it is possible to be, with no expanses of woodland, heathland or wetland present to entice migrants, Warwick is located miles away from any vagrant hotspots.   If, like me, you have the birding bug, this could be a pretty depressing situation.  Indeed, I find myself dreaming of Bardsey Island and have even researched buying a caravan at Spurn.

But there are positives of living in a place where whinchats and whimbrels are big news.  I’m pretty sure that finding a pied flycatcher on my patch would be just as adrenalin-filled as finding a collared flycatcher on Shetland, albeit not as social media-worthy, and certainly not twitch-worthy!  There is so little chance of seeing something unusual, competitive listing just isn’t on the radar for the local birders of Warwick.

The Warwick 100 was introduced three years ago by my good friend (and one of my son’s birding mentors).  The three of us decided to work as a team to try to find 100 species of birds within a two mile radius of Warwick town centre in a calendar year, with a WhatsApp group set up and this blog updated regularly.   Like birds, birders are few and far between around here, but over the last couple of years, our little team has grown to ten members, all contributing here and there with sightings, asking advice and general banter.   The team is genuinely happy for those who spot something new – as we are working toward one goal together.  And we’ve managed to smash that goal each year.

We reached 100 on June 30^th 2018, with 107 in total. 
We reached 100 on June 5^th 2019, with 113 in total.

This year we reached 100 on April 19^th!!  So, we could be in line for a bumper year…

In these strange times of lockdown, there is no chance of my getting to the wonderful places I usually visit to hopefully find something special, but I’m really relishing my daily exercise walk with my binoculars each day.   We may moan about Warwick and its lack of birds, but I am so lucky to have my health, some lovely countryside to stroll around and a great team with whom I feel a sense of belonging, alongside a mutual goal. 

We may have no choice but to isolate, but birding as a team can certainly prevent us from feeling isolated.

Sunrise on The Warwickshire by Lizzy "Bradders" Bradbury