November birding memories

While it’s easy to dismiss November as the end of autumn migration, it’s worth remembering how exciting and dynamic a month it can be. Here, three birders share their fondest memories from this month in years gone by.

OCTOBER may be the main show in autumn, but don’t write off November – it’s a month that can produce extreme rarities throughout. From a bird-finder’s perspective things might become a bit more hit and miss by this point, with common migrants on the wane, but the old saying “the big one travels alone” certainly comes in to play this month, as the days shorten and the air grows colder.

There have been a few memorable November periods during the time I’ve been a keen birder, but the one that always chimes in my mind came in 2005. It had been a hectic hurricane season in the North Atlantic, and the month started with an influx of Chimney Swifts, including three lingering in Co Cork and four records from the English east coast.

As a young and impressionable twitcher, I ‘needed’ just about every rare bird that turned up that month. Unfortunately, the Magnificent Frigatebird found moribund in a Shropshire field on 7th was never going to be gettable, but an amazing weekend unfolded on 12-13th.

A Green Heron on Anglesey, which had been found in October but was quickly lost, had been pinned down at Red Wharf Bay on 7th and was the staple for a Saturday twitch on 12th. Late morning saw news break of an Upland Sandpiper in Somerset, which ended up being perhaps the showiest example of its species this century – it hung around for a fortnight, too. Many birders headed straight there after the heron.

Then, in the late afternoon, a Little Swift broke at Overstrand, Norfolk. Unlike the Chimney Swifts, of which I’d dipped two, the bird was ‘nailed on’– it roosted on cliffs just east of Cromer that evening, allowing a big crowd to gather and watch it depart early the next morning.

The weekend wasn’t done there, though – late morning on Sunday 13th, a Grey-cheeked Thrush was unearthed in an inland wood on the northern outskirts of London! Again, it proved highly co-operative and, like the month’s other highlights, went on to linger for a couple of weeks.

The moral of the story is that you can never rest on your laurels in November, whether a keen bird-finder or a lister. I think about some of the many other mega birds I’ve seen this month: Long-billed Murrelet, Mourning Dove, American Bittern, American Cliff Swallow … soon, winter ‘proper’ will be here and it’ll be time to recuperate, but while November’s here, never lose the faith.

WHEN joining the crowd at a twitch and the nearest birder says:

“It flew off a couple of minutes ago. But don’t worry, it will be back soon …”, I always tend to worry.

On this particular sunny November day in 1985 my stress levels had increased with each passing minute, until a jay-like silhouette flew into the back of a large pine, built the anticipation by remaining hidden behind a branch for 30 seconds, then swooped down the slope and onto the stage like a showman before an adoring public. The first twitchable Nutcracker since the major influx of 196869 did not disappoint. It had chosen a garden orchard at Brick

Kiln Farm near Westleton in Suffolk as its venue and it put on a fantastic performance for allcomers.

After surveying the crowd from a small apple tree, the bird dropped to the ground and lollopped towards the assembled twitchers, until it was no more than 15 feet away. It then selected and grasped one of the many fallen apples firmly in its claws. With ripe fruit being easier to get into than nuts, the apple was never going to offer much resistance, but the Nutcracker proceeded to attack and devour it with a series of powerful, hacking blows from its beak.

Further apples were similarly dispatched, and the show went on for around half an hour, until the bird retreated back into the woods to presumably rest and digest. It was so entertaining, that we decided to wait for the next couple of shows as well. We left shortly after midday (reassuring an arriving carload that they shouldn’t worry as “it will be back soon”) and headed the short distance down the road to walk the path through the marshes to the beach at Walberswick.

The alder wood held a nice big mixed flock of Eurasian Siskin and Lesser and a few frosty Mealy Redpolls for us to sift through and, when the path finally opened up into the reedbed, a male Western Marsh Harrier drifted right over us, closely followed by a male Hen Harrier. Bearded Tits pinged from the reeds and as we were admiring them, a couple of Bewick’s Swans flew past before landing out of view. On reaching the beach, looking out to sea produced a raft of Common Scoter. There was a silvery Redthroated Diver feeding about 100 m offshore, and more divers and decent numbers of Guillemots were further out.

A flock of Twite flew along the beach, before settling in the saltmarsh grasses nearby and feeding with slightly more finesse than the Nutcracker had. With the sun getting lower in the sky, we headed back to the car and finished what had been a truly cracking day with two ringtail Hen Harriers coming into roost in the reeds.

THE lack of predictability in birding certainly has to be one of its big appeals. As I set out into a damp, misty, late autumn morning on 11 November 2013 I decided to make a prediction anyway: it was going to be dead!

That year had been a fantastic first season as Assistant Warden at Portland Bird Observatory. Although there were no killer rares we’d seen some excellent passage. It was now the end of autumn, migrant landbirds had been slowly fizzling out and a blasting south-easterly wasn’t filling me with a great deal of confidence. However, the first hour of that morning went by pretty quickly and included highlights of Corn Bunting and Ring Ouzel, with my mood now picking up considerably.

The murk was beginning to clear, so a cursory glance towards the sea was made. One scan revealed a Pomarine Skua, several Kittiwakes and a Little Gull; another look saw a flock of Common Scoter and a few more Little

Gulls. Something was afoot and it was time to turn focus to the sea.

What happened next couldn’t have been anticipated in any of our wildest dreams – autumn sea passage at the Bill can regularly disappoint and the counts across the channel in France leave you feeling pretty dejected. I returned to the observatory to join a couple of others already counting. To my astonishment, they’d recorded more than 100 Little Gulls. Over the next five hours, some 1,138 birds moved west, smashing the Dorset record almost four times over!

The backup cast wasn’t anything to be sniffed at either, with more than 50 skuas, thousands of Kittiwakes and even a bonus Little Auk twitched at the cove.

Nothing ultra-rare, but a day when low expectations were completely turned around. This absolutely stands up there for me as one of my best days in November and likely will never be repeated again.