Eleven new NMT ticks and a new Favourite Bird

Since I last wrote I've 'ticked' 11 new birds for the NMT year list including several of the expected spring migrants that I have been looking out for since about mid-April. 

Last Sunday I had a lovely day birding at Coatham Marsh, Redcar Seafront and South Gare and added Reed Warbler, Sedge Warbler and Common Whitethroat (which is also a warbler, although you wouldn't know it from the name) to the list along with my first Swallow of the year (a lovely male with really long tail streamers). While doing a short sea-watch from the end of the gare I had a few Sandwich Terns and a Kittiwake flying past. Sandwich Terns, like many of our summer visitors, spend the winter further south (around the coasts of Africa) but the Kittiwake, despite being a smallish, delicate-looking gull is actually a really tough cookie and spends the winter out in the wilds of the Atlantic Ocean before returning to nest on cliffs (and sometimes buildings) around the coasts of Britain and Ireland. These six new birds took my list to 131 for the year.

A male Common Whitethroat - photo by Richard Prior

A Sedge Warbler - photo by Richard Prior

Yesterday I cycled 34 miles, with the first stop being a site next to the Tees a few miles south of Stockton where I survey a 1x1km square for the British Trust for Ornithology as part of their Breeding Bird Survey. While walking to the start-point for the survey I heard my first Lesser Whitethroat (another warbler) of the year (NMT # 132). During the survey I mostly had common breeding species but a Grasshopper Warbler and my second Green Woodpecker of the year were pretty interesting. Another unusual bird was a single Barnacle Goose - this species used to be only a winter visitor to a few areas in the north and west of Britain but now there are many flocks of feral birds scattered about the country which are here all year. This could have been one of those but the fact that it was on its own in a pond on a farm was enough to make me suspicious that it might not actually be a wild bird and so I haven't counted it on the NMT list.

Having finished the survey I went to Bowesfield Marsh where I heard my first Cetti's Warbler of the year (NMT #133 and the first I have heard since I moved up to the north of England) . This nondescript brown warbler is much more frequently heard than seen - it skulks in reed-beds, shouting its loud song, which to me sounds like it is saying its own name several times at high volume - "CHETTI-CHETTI-CHETTI-CHEH". The bird, which is named after Francesco Cetti, an Italian zoologist, mathematician and Catholic priest, was unknown in Britain before 1972 but can now be found in many places in the southern half of England. It appears to be spreading north and has colonised Teesside in the last few years. As well as the Cetti's there were  six other warbler species singing at Bowesfield and various waterfowl on the ponds. A couple of House Martins which were feeding on aerial insects over the ponds along with some Sand Martins and Swallows took my year-list to 133.

From Bowesfield I headed (via the bike shop in Stockton for some replacement brake-blocks - all this cycling has been taking its toll), to the  Saltholme area  where two potential new NMT birds had been seen. The first was a Greenshank (#135) on Saltholme West Pool which another birder got me onto a couple of minutes after I got there. 

Greenshank is one of my favourite waders. This photo was taken by
Richard Prior in France but you can see some of my own photos in
the blog post I wrote about the species last year 
(Species Spotlight - Day 7 - Greenshank)

Carrying on for another mile or so I came to the place where some birders were already parked looking for my big target-bird of the day - although 'big' in this case only refers to how much I wanted to see it, as it was a Little Gull, which as its name suggests is tiny for a gull, being a similar size to a Blackbird (although with much longer wings). As soon as I got there the bird moved out into view and was spotted by one of the other birders through his scope. A few minutes later it flew around a bit and I got a really good view of it through my binoculars (I didn't have my scope or my camera with me as I wanted to travel light). Number 136 for my NMT list and my last new bird of the day.

While I was watching this delightful little bird showing off its distinctive charcoal-grey under-wings, contrasting almost white upper-wings and neat jet-black hood, its beauty and grace actually brought on a strong emotional reaction in me. I realised that I had an answer to a question which I have been asked many, many times over the years and never been able to answer - viz. "What is your favourite bird?". I now know that my favourite bird is definitely an adult summer-plumaged Little Gull.  As I didn't get any photos of the bird I will instead share the link to the Wikipedia page for the species (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_gull) which more than does it justice and includes some great photos of the breeding plumage. After reading that I hope you will think twice before saying "I hate seagulls, they're all evil".

Little Gull, like many birds, has very different plumages at different
stages in its life. The bird I saw yesterday was an adult in summer
plumage - with a black head and very light grey back and upperwings.
This bird, photographed in Geneva by Richard Prior, is a young bird in its 
1st-winter plumage - also beautiful though, in my opinion.

Many thanks to my old friend Rich Prior for letting me use his photos in my blog, in the absence of any of my own.

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