Urban Birder The
David Lindo visits Britain’s most easterly point. The birds are there, but will his old birding pal turn up?
T
he Stone Roses have just done it, Blur did it and even Duran Duran managed it but would it happen to me? Could the old partnership involving my erstwhile main birding buddy Cornelius Ravenwing III and I be rekindled? We were a birding duo who chased feathered dreams through adolescent into young adulthood. The plan was to burst back onto the scene in our chosen venue of Lowestoft on the Suffolk coast and fresh after finding an autumnal mega rarity once again we would chasing around the nation in search of birds. However, that great comeback stalled at the first hurdle. In the last minute, Cornelius had decided to spend the morning in bed with a new girlfriend instead of shaking bushes down with me among the coastal scrub. I’ll teach him for reneging on arrangements, I thought, as I crept around looking for tired migrants in the company of local Lowestoft birders Andrew Easton and Steve Jones. We had met at Links Road car park, a few hundred yards south along the coast. This was no normal car park as it had recently boasted a Woodchat Shrike that stayed for a week. A cursory check of the gulls that were loafing by a puddle revealed no rarities, just a bunch of 12 Black-headed Gulls. But then I noticed that one of them was noticeably taller, standing on longer flesh-coloured legs, quite different to the reddish pins that its congeners were sporting. I toyed with the idea of it being a winter-plumaged Slender-billed Gull. It too has flesh-coloured legs. But after consulting with the guys we had to agree reluctantly that it was just an aberrant Blackheaded. It would have been a great find to taunt my distracted friend but maybe it was a precursor for what was to come... I was being shown the interesting birding venues along the northern edge of this totally underwatched town. Andrew, who has been birding in Lowestoft since the mid 70s explained how the area and its environs are viewed as the poor cousins to nearby Minsmere and to the mecca that is Norfolk. Whenever a rarity are found elsewhere in East Anglia the Lowestoft birders will rush off to twitch it instead of being inspired to search their own local patch. Had they done that, far more special birds would have been uncovered. I certainly began to see how attractive the habitat was for birds when we entered Warren House Wood across the road and north of the car park. It had rarities written all over it. Slowly walking through the tangled paths we came across small tit flocks captained by Long-tailed Tits, whilst small squadrons of Siskins peppered with the occasional Skylark passed south overhead. The wood’s main claim to fame was Suffolk’s first Red-eyed Vireo back in 1988. It turned out to be the first of four to be seen in the Lowestoft area over the years. We eventually surfaced from the wood into Gunton Warren, an area of scrub and bracken that butted up to the beach. The Warren can attract a small contingent of wintering Dartford Warblers but it is also a very popular place for dog walkers, so an
early morning visit to catch migrants before they moved on was a good idea. Our rummage around resulted in a few wary Blackbirds, several Meadow Pipits and lots of fantasising about finding a wayward Rufous-tailed Robin. We drifted back south past the car park along the seawall. We eventually reached Flycatcher Alley, so named, as you may have guessed, by birders back in 1910 impressed with its preponderance of flycatchers. We didn’t see anything for ages until a party of Crossbill flew over to excite us, followed by a very brown and white Chiffchaff that popped out of the herbage for us to inspect. It looked pretty good for a ‘Siberian’ Chiffchaff, a scarce visitor to these shores. Andrew then caused me to salivate heavily when he recounted the species that had been found earlier in the autumn: Icterine, Cetti’s and at least three Yellow-browed Warblers. Further south was Sparrows Nest Park - a quite wooded and very prettily landscaped open space with an open-air theatre, bowling green, and the like. The park was screaming ‘migrant trap’ to me and I was not wrong. Its roll call of great birds included a recent Olive-backed Pipit, one of the famous Red-eyed Vireos, a Red-flanked Bluetail and a male Collared Flycatcher amongst others. The magnet drawing them in, as well as the more common migrants, was a still functional lighthouse in the south west corner throwing out its inviting light to the passing avian travellers. We managed to connect with the first Brambling of the autumn as well as a brief Firecrest with a roving tit flock. This spot was well worth a visit and conveniently it had a café on site to indulge in a celebratory cup of tea. I spent the end of a very interesting day seawatching at Ness Point, the most eastern point of Britain. In days of old there used to be a sewage outfall here that attracted interesting gulls, including regular Sabine’s Gulls and mammoth flocks of up to 42 Purple Sandpipers on the rocks. Along with Andrew, Steve and a bunch of very friendly local birders I managed to see a Redthroated Diver and at least five Great Skuas out to sea chasing anything with wings. Nearby, a female Black Redstart performed and on the rocky shore a lone Purple Sandpiper fed. So, Cornelius, who had the better day? Surely there’s no contest!
FACTFILE BEST SITE: Gunton Warren CITY LIST: 325 Special thanks to Simon Tonkin, Andrew Easton and Steve Jones For more information on birding in Lowestoft: http://home.clara.net/ ammodytes Suffolk Ornithologist Group: www.sogonline.org.uk Big thanks to Penny Hayhurst for lending me her car!