Terry Smith's Bird Update

Hidden Dips!

March 1981 was a month of mainly dipping out, whilst travelling hundreds of miles in the process. On the 7th, I was up at 1.30a.m. and with a car-full, drove up to Alton Water in Suffolk. We arrived at 6a.m. and staggered out of the car into the pouring rain. And all this just to see a poxy hybrid! What a trip. Soaked through to the skin. Wiping our optics so we could watch a moorhen/coot hybrid which some observers seemed to think was an American Coot! Dejected and drowned, we slid through the mud back to the car. We then arrived at Lowestoft to look for Iceland and Glaucous Gulls which were meant to be in that area. No luck here either I'm afraid. So we took ourselves off to look for Golden Pheasants at Hockham Belt. One member of our crew scored, while I floundered around in the mud and undergrowth only a few feet away! It was one of those days when I wished I'd stayed in bed and had a good night's sleep. We journeyed back towards the south-west, calling in at Combe in Berkshire, where a Rough-legged Buzzard had been reported. As I mentioned in my earlier rambling, this species gave me the biggest headache ever, as I constantly dipped out, and today was to be no exception. The sole reasonable bird of that day was a ringtail Hen Harrier which had flown over the road in front of us at Blythburgh! I climbed in to bed that night, wondering whether I should give up twitching all together!
Of course, I didn't and a week later, after assisting with the wildfowl count at Chew Valley Lake, I raced back up to Combe in Berkshire, to try and see the Rough-leg again, which had been reported again mid-week. Of course I saw nothing again, and being a glutton for punishment, went back the next day and spent every daylight hour touring round the area to no avail. Yes, March 81 was turning out to be one of THOSE months.
Continuing in this mode of utter dejection and despair, a visit was made to west Cornwall to hopefully see a Bonaparte's Gull. Guess what? We dipped again. Did see a Ring-billed though. Who the hell wants to see any rare birds anyway? Surely the pleasure is all in the visiting of birdless places miles away from home! Feeling as though I hadn't done enough to further the cause of dipping, I reckoned that a another weekend at Combe would get me in the record books, so 21/22 March was spent milling around seeing a blank landscape again. By now, I was under the impression I would NEVER see another lifer. The only thing to positively come out of this depressing period was the amount of beer drunk to drown our sorrows at the end of every dip-day. Wadworths brewery had to alledgedly open a new Wiltshire factory to cope with the massive demand for 6X from the county's disillusioned twitchers! I was in danger of being too drunk to drive anywhere for another bird should one be reported, and did I really want to go twitching again? Thankfully I did not give up, and our next trip was completed successfully, even though I was breathalysed!!
March 28 saw myself and Ewan Basterfield setting out at 3a.m. and driving down to west Cornwall. We had crossed into Somerset, and I was negotiating a rather damp muddy stretch of road junction, when the car decided to leave the road completely. No, I wasn't drunk (for about the first time for weeks!) and no, I wasn't going particularly fast either. It was just the combination of mud and rain on a nastily-cambered corner that sent us off the road. Despite being in the back of beyond, a police car appeared out of nowhere, and depite my protestations, the nice Mr Plod saw I was soon sitting in HIS Car blowing into a little bag! I tried to tell him I was going OUT, rather than returning home, but the somewhat early hour of the morning meant that he could only believe I had been out on the town all night. No, he didn't know what a Bonaparte's Gull was, and no, he didn't realise he was wasting valuable birding time by holding me up! He examined the little bag of crystals, shining a torch at them to see if they'd changed colour. 'Hmm, they seem to have gone a deeper yellow!' 'Perhaps its the Corn Flakes I ate before I left home' I retorted. Of course Mr Plod was singularly unimpressed with this comment and proceeded to delay me further and give me a fatherly lecture on how to drive with a bit more care. I again retorted with the suggestion that he would like to try and drive over the same spot in my car and see if he could keep the car on the road! This nearly made him throw the book at me anyway, and a further suggestion from me that he might be a bit tired and tetchy due to sitting in a cold car and having to wait for hours for the next sucker to come driving past on his carefully 'prepared' muddy road nearly had me arrested. In the end he let me go, but would not help to push the car out of the ditch I had put a wheel into. Poor Ewan had to push on his own, whilst I revved the car gently, whilst the nice Mr Policeman shone his torch to watch over the hilarious proceedings! Eventually we got going again and duly arrived at the Hayle estuary without further incident. This time I struck lucky and the Bonaparte's Gull put on a stunning performance in front of the hide next to the Old Quayhouse Inn. Policemen and breath tests were soon forgotten, and the added bonus of a Glaucous Gull and a prolonged chat with the late Bernard King at Newlyn further enhanced the day. However, we did dip on Little Egret at St Just-in-Roseland, but forgave it due to it having chosen such a beautiful-named place to visit. We chanced upon a roadside Goshawk sat on a fencepost at St Breock Downs as we continued on our way eastwards, this bird ending our birding day very nicely! We continued driving and nightfall found us at Portland Bill, where we spent a cold, uncomfortable night in the car, after a visit to a local hostelry. The next day saw us zombies staggering around the Portland area looking for early spring migrants, but we only connected with Puffin and Sand Martin, although Bearded Tit and Cetti's Warblers also put in appearances.
So March 1981 produced only ONE lifer for me, despite all that travelling. But the year was going to get better as it wore on. Just how good you can see in my next thrilling instalment!