Mission impossible

I like a challenge when it comes to finding wildlife as you will see from the “Wildlife Challenge” page I write for each issue of Nature’s Home.

My challenge was to see two of my favourite birds in a weekend that involved birthday celebrations for my wife, last minute present and cake buying for said event and entertaining the in laws/not looking as if I didn’t want to spend time with them during their visit from Yorkshire.

Cue the Mission Impossible music, routes sorted on the SatNav and an early night.

Hedging my bets
My alarm got me up at 6am on Saturday morning and I managed to slip out without waking anyone up. Next was a 20 minute drive to an area of wildlife-friendly farmland to the south-west of my village where a great grey shrike has been on territory for the last week. My record for these pied butcherbirds has been poor this winter – two attempts and two misses, adding to the pressure of “challenge one”.

I parked up by the church and found the two ancient hedgerows the bird has been in – the left hand one in Bedfordshrie; the right hand in Cambridgeshire. “Should be a doddle” I thought. First mistake.

It's been a great winter for great grey shrikes and they are now popping up in new places as wintering birds head back to the continent (illustration by Nature's Home's own Mike Langman rspb-images.com)

20 minutes later, I had nothing and grumbled to a couple of other birders present that it had to do a “Friday night flit”. One last scan and fortunately a flurry of black, grey and white wings in a gap in the Cambs hedgerow convinced me it was still present. With a strong wind coming from the south-west, I surmised it was sheltering out of sight on the far side, so I drove back down to the main road to get on the right side of the hedge. Sure enough, there it was and with great views in the bag, it was time for challenge two.

Back to school
It has been a waxwing winter but I’ve only managed to see two groups so reports of a flock of them in my nearest town had me heading there for a drive round the general area they were in. The area was about 100 times bigger than I thought it was and with the time now 8 am, “needle in a haystack” came to mind. I vaguely remembered mention of a school and as I passed one, I slowed down and spied seven plump birds in a bush. Waxwings done – and superb views too with much trilling and rosehip gobbling.

Birthday cake and wrapping secured at a handily-placed supermarket next door, it was time to head home.

I got back just as everyone was just stirring, with a very smug feeling. Then I received news that the flock of scaup I had missed in the week at my local gravel pits had not in fact departed but had just moved the other side of an inconveniently placed large island. These beautiful seaducks are one of my favourites and being the biggest ever flock of them seen at the pits, I had to go. Time to push my luck as the challenge now became a three-parter.

Scaup are much rarer now than they used to be, so a flock of nine at my local gravel pits was too good to miss. Male above and female below (illustrations by Mike Langman rspb-images.com)

“Are you ok if I just dash out again? Should only need half an hour”

I was out the door and down the A1 in a flash and these dapper ducks did not disappoint. All nine of them made a splendid sight among the tufted ducks and pochards, busy diving away. The males looked super silvery and the females’ huge white face patches made a fine sight in the hazy sunshine.

And the best news of all? Not a single brownie point lost for my weekend hat trick of super winter birds – or so my wife led me to believe...