Paul Matson's Birding Blog: Wednesday 9th June

There ended up being a twist to our plan. The original plan was to head to Somerset to look for the River Warbler early in the morning and then wander slowly back visiting other Hampshire sites. That was until yesterday afternoon when a reported Dusky Warbler on Lundy Island morphed into a Sulphur- bellied Warbler, a first record for Britain. The plus point was that this was vaguely in the direction we were planning to go anyway, although another couple of hours further. The difficulty was that scheduled boats to Lundy were infrequent and there was no planned sailing tomorrow. It was late afternoon when Gary phoned and said he had 2 places on a charter-boat that was leaving Ilfracombe at 6am in the morning.

Nothing for it then, we left my house just after midnight, and 4 hours later we had pulled into the harbour car park in Ilfracombe. Our plan was to obviously see the key bird then spend most of the rest of the day on Lundy until the boat returned in the afternoon, we would then find somewhere to stay overnight and probably go for the River Warbler in the morning.

We grabbed a bit of sleep in the car before finding the other 10 birders we were sharing the boat with. There were 2 or 3 other birding charter boats that were also leaving just before ours. The boat was not large and we settled around a centered bench-box in the middle of the deck. The 1.5 hours it took to cross to Lundy was bumpy, wet and uncomfortable, small consolations in several close Manx Shearwaters, a couple of Puffin, Razorbill, Guillemot, Gannet and Kittiwake.

Just as we arrived on the island around 7.30am we received 2 bits of news. Firstly, that the target warbler had not been seen this morning by the earliest birding arrivals. Secondly, our boat captain announced that we only had 2 hours and he would be departing promptly at 9.30am, we had assumed that we would have several hours on Lundy and not return until the afternoon. Neither bits of news were what we were hoping for.

We climbed off the boat slightly damp and a little deflated headed uphill to the Millicombe valley, which is where the bird had been seen, is the best wooded valley area on the island and is not a large area to explore. To condense our 2 hour stay into a couple of sentences, the Sulphur-bellied Warbler had obviously disappeared overnight, another birder had glimpsed a Subalpine Warbler sp but it did not reappear before we left and the best bird we saw was an unexpected Hawfinch. Not necessarily the best impression of Lundy, but there was always this afternoon and as it turned out our curtailed stay on the island was probably a good result.

We bumped our way back to Ilfracombe Harbour arriving back just after 11am, slightly disappointed and then we failed to find anywhere near the harbour to have a decent breakfast. Cutting our losses we left Ilfracombe and headed towards Somerset to Ham Wall RSPB near Meare opting for a service station brunch.

Ham Wall was a completely different experience to this morning. The reserve is a vast area of created reedbeds and wetland from naturally flooded areas and was full of birds. Despite being the middle of the afternoon and quite late in the Spring season, the reedbeds were alive with Reed, Sedge and Cetti's Warblers, Willow Warblers, Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps were still singing strongly from the Sallow scrub. Great White Egrets were flying over the reeds, obviously in good numbers here. We walked briskly to where the River Warbler had been seen and immediately it was singing ( reeling ). We spent a good hour getting great views of the River Warbler where intermittently it would dive into cover before re-appearing to sing from its favoured branches of a small bare bush in a low part of the reeds. We walked slowly back to the car and it was after 4 when we left and headed home - definitely a day of 2 halves.