2009 Duck Broken

A spot of twitching this weekend involved a 450 mile round trip that ended my 18 month barren streak. The Staines Moor Brown Shrike continued into a second week on the west London nature reserve and provided my first UK list addition since the Norfolk White-crowned Sparrow back in February last year.

The bird gave typically prolonged views as it hunted from the scattered hawthorn bushes but unfortunately never came close enough for a decent photo. Endless small flocks of Ring-necked Parakeets over-flew the site as did the worlds largest jet airliners. How on earth the residents of Stanwell Moor village (placed rather inconveniently at the end of Heathrow airport's main runway) can hear themselves think from dawn until dusk every day is a mystery but ninety minutes of it did for me!

Another recent split of the Yellow-legged Gull complex was all the excuse we needed to depart the noisy capital and head for the blissful serenity of the Oxfordshire countryside. At a waste disposal site (where else?) near the town of Didcot an adult Azorean Gull had been making regular visits. A small pit adjacent to the landfill was the best place to catch up with this brute of a bird as it performed it's daily ablutions alongside several hundred Lesser-black Backs and a handful of Western Yellow-legged and Caspian Gulls.

We only had an hour or so to wait, which was good going by all accounts, but had to be quick. Almost as soon as the bird had been picked out of the throng, it flew off over our heads and disappeared out on to inaccessible farmland. I did manage to grab these few flight shots as it did so which amply illustrate what a striking species this is. A real evil-looking heavyweight and not a bird you'd ever imagine overlooking!

Despite endless roadworks we were back in God's Own for five o'clock and straight to the pub for a quick celebratory. For the record my UK life list is now 483 and after this weekend I could seriously get back into this twitching lark - I could, I seriously could!