Devil Birder

On Sunday 9th August I persuaded my dad to take me down to Farlington Marshes for the Spotted Crake that had been seen here recently. I needed this as a lifer and of course more importantly, for Britain. It was also a meagre attempt to try to soften the big gap between Phil Wallace's year list and my own after his excellent pelagic the day before and the one he was on that moment.

Although I always appreciate my dad taking me, going with the parents has several draw backs. They don't get up till about 9am, take about 2 hours to get 'ready' then the journey doesn't really get started until they have visited the service station a mile down the road for snacks. So I usually only end up on site between midday and 1pm. This time I arrived at roughly 1:30pm.

I was out of the car like a bullet, only to realise I'd left my phone and my pager in the car...nice... pegged it back then was on my way again. I saw a small gathering of birders looking eagerly over at where the bird was reported to be showing as if they were on it and quickened pace. On the way towards them I flushed a Northern Wheatear. It was a huge anti-climx when I got there and found they weren't looking at anything in particular at the moment. After about five minutes I relocated the Spotted Crake in front of the reeds on the east side of the lagoon where it showed well for the whole half hour I stayed to watch the bird. It was very energetic, running along the edge, in and out of reeds, jumping on and off of stems, bathing, preening and being given a hard time by the much bigger Moorhens. A brilliant lifer. Just before this, I saw a winter plumaged adult Spotted Redshank which was a nice year tick with the many Redshanks as well as a handful of Greenshanks, a couple of Common Sandpipers, a Ruff and many Grey Plovers, Oystercatchers and Black-tailed Godwits. A Water Rail also showed well.

I then went off and had a very enjoyable walk around the seawall and through/around some fields and bushes. From the seawall I saw two small flocks of Whimbrel (8 and 4), c.500 Curlew, 200+ Oystercatcher, 2 Brent Geese (presumably injured...), a gathering of 25 Little Egrets with c.10 others scattered here and there.

I watched the Crake again for a while on the way back, one of the highlights of my year.