Birding Headaches

Today was full of birding headaches. The day started off pretty well with a couple of nice Poms past the Bill. Ebird list HERE. However it wasn't long before the trouble started when a distant Nightjar was picked up over the sea and even though I could follow the markers it was moving past I couldn't properly see it and at best saw an untickable flick. Presumably my scope was on too low magnification- it was extremely frustrating to miss such a unique at sea sighting.

Next headache wasn't too much of a surprise. A Hoopoe was seen at Halsey's yesterday so I set off on my seventh dip of this species this year and sure enough no Hoopoe confirming that Hoopoes do hate me and are indeed my jinx bird. Instead I had a couple of Red Kites and also a more distant Kite which looked interesting and looked even more interesting when I got back to my computer. It looks like a Black Kite but in some images the tail appears a bit too rufous and the wing formula didn't seem right in some images (see below for more). There was a bit of a divided opinion amongst the whatsapp groups so it's gone down as a possible Black Kite. 

Then news broke of a Savi's Warbler at Medmerry yesterday evening- I was there yesterday evening on the same path it was found on. There was no sight or sound of it today.

So basically missed three Peninsula ticks today and yesterday- Nightjar, Hoopoe and Savi's Warbler and also got a near miss with a Black Kite. 

I've had better birding days! Luckily my sister came to visit this afternoon and we all went over to Bognor for some headache antidote- gambling at the Pier arcade and fish and chips.  

There was a good bit of news today, our paper on the Origins of American vagrants revealed by feather isotope analysis in Nature journal/ Scientific Reports was published today HERE. Proud to have worked on that paper with a great team. It's quite a heavy paper so if interested in rare bird/vagrancy theory and fancy something more popular see this two part introduction on vagrancy that I did for Birdwatch/Birdguides HERE. Literally my favourite subject in the world- but seemingly doesn't seem to help me see, find or id rare birds lately !! :-) 

Dark phase Pomarine Skua 

Brents still moving- these birds have very worn coverts suggesting they wintered somewhere with a lot of winter sun- presumably Portugal/northern Iberia. 

Cattle Egret

One of the Red Kites 

Possible Black Kite- the photos above showing the upperwing are pretty convincing for Black Kite (dark grey-black with little contrast in the coverts and a relatively shallow forked tail) but the lower photo seems to show some rufous in the tail with quite a bit of contrast in the primary panel. In the bottom image it looks like there are five fingers (better for Red Kite with a short p5) but in other images p5 looks longer and there was also a suggestion from Dave that the bird was moulting p1 and also an outer primary (if you count the primaries there appears to be only nine indicating a missing one which could be p6 which would make p5 indeed long with six fingers). However there wasn't consensus so for now it's a possible/probable and hopefully the bird gets seen again and photographed better.