Tuesday 3rd November
Garden Tick!
Whilst carrying out a bit of good old DIY today - I heard a Black Redstart calling from the garden! A quick dash for the bins/camera and a cracking garden tick sat on the garden wall, taking the garden list to a grand total of 40 since moving in just over 7 months ago.

Who said DIY was all bad??

Sunday 1st November
A late afternoon wander down to the Otter with the Mrs allowed us to enjoy some fantastic aerial displays of 1,200+Starlings coming into roost in the reedbed- Not Green, not Bright Green and not Greenish, just good old fashioned Sturnus Vulgaris!

Saturday 31st October
GREEN(ish) DAY?
After much debate on an interesting pylloscopus warbler on The Lizard, considered to be either a Greenish Warbler or Green Warbler (potential 2nd record for Britain), Russki and I decided to head down first thing on Saturday morning and have a look for ourselves.

The bird showed on and off fairly regularly during the 3 hours that we were there and we had some good scope and bin views low down in good light as well as in the canopy in potentially misleading light. In a nutshell, it was a very interesting bird and certainly to my eye had yellowish tones to the supercilium, neck sides and UT coverts. The bill was very "snouty" looking seeming thick based and long, the upperparts did not strike me as particularly "bright green" seeming rather washed out but nontheless green in colour. A very prominent wing bar was present on the greater coverts with a few pale edges on the median coverts on just one side. The supercilium had an obvious bulge to the supercilium immediately behind the eye and did not appear to meet on the forehead. The overall jizz of the bird was quite distinct in that it seemed quite stout flicking around with continually drooped wings.
The bird was heard to call a few times and was clearly di-syllabic to my ear.

My experience of Green Warbler (aka Bright Green Warbler) is only in Sri Lanka in March and were not great views, but I do remember thinking they seemed quite washed out in appearance - not a great help!

Persistance by a local Cornish birder resulted in a recording being made of the call of the and a sonogram was sent to Magnus Robb on Saturday afternoon who concluded; Greenish Warbler without doubt.

However, it has been suggested that Green Warblers from the Black Sea region are almost inseparable from Greenish Warbler in plumage and although the songs are very different, the call of this population is stated as being clearly di-syllabic as opposed to the tri-syllabic stated in most literature in relation to populations elsewhere in the world.

If you haven't fallen asleep already, see below for more.

See here for more: http://surfbirds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5983
See some photos taken by Steve Rogers of bird here: http://www.swopticsphoto.com/

Other birds seen on site included Yellow-browed Warbler and Pied Flycatcher.
No time for any puddings I'm afraid - they will be coming soon!

Friday 30th October
A trip to Plymouth to do some domestic chores also allowed a little time to slip in some birding at Saltram Park. Here the highlights whilst birding with Russki were 2 cracking Firecrests and an absolutely stonking Millionaire Shortbread that was so tasty, I just shovelled it in without even taking a photo - My apologies!

Saturday 24th October
South Shields hosts Jewel in the Crown
Seeing the very wet forecast, feeling a bit under the weather (others may refer to it as man flu!) and not being able to cope with a BIG DIP, I met with my team at 06.30am on Saturday morning and headed North hoping that if it wasn't there, at least we would not have travelled too far before knowing we had dipped! With three others for company who also suffer from the affliction that is known as Twitching, all we could do was wait and keep driving north. At 08.30am, just south of Birmingham we received the news we were waiting for and I then knew it was going to be a very long day!
At 2.00pm we arrived in drizzly conditions and dashed down to the quarry to get cracking scope views of the boy! After enjoying some great views, despite the weather, we headed back to the car about 2hrs later and the weather deteriorated and we got completely soaked! Within 5 minutes, the weather had miraculously cleared and the sun was out and I felt it rude not to go back for second helpings! The light was great, it was calm and still and the eastern gem performed exceptionally along with a much more elusive YBW that seemed most unhappy with its new eastern neighbour.

So - back in the car and another 7 hour drive home returning at about 01.30am Sunday - Was it worth it? Of Course it was!

See below for poor record shots of the little beauty.
Eastern-crowned Warbler - 1st record for Britain.

Thursday 20th October
Suffering from Post Pterodroma Shock today after yesterday's seawatch. Still all seems a little surreal but yesterday morning my legs went from beneath me and I physically shook as I watched a Pterodroma whizz past the seafront. In total shock, and within seconds of seeing it, I rang Kev at Dawlish and literally shouted I've just had a "Fea's Petrel type thing" (note I could hardly speak!) heading west towards you!" It still seems strange writing those words now and the event was quite a blur as the distinct jizz, flight and plumage hit me! Rather frustratingly despite also alerting watchers at Berry Head, it was not picked up again. Maybe the next few days of blustery winds will mean it gets picked up somewhere - I hope so.

Sunday 18th October
A walk along the coast path and a visit to the hide with the Mrs produced a female Pintail, 100 Common Scoter and a good flock of Linnet and Skylark.