Brian arrives, big seas and a fake sibe.

 The weekend was really one big blow. Storm Brian arrived and as predicted produced a gale. Either side the winds stayed strong, from the west and made birding hard. This all put the kibosh on any vis mig. A saving grace with Start is that at least the road between the car park and the light is fairly sheltered. The tamarisks may be blown to hell and no birds are in because its a westerly but its a bit of hope. As it was last Friday a couple each of Fire and Goldcrests were in the tamarisk, the former may have been remnants from the previous sundays influx. Up at the farm there were another 7 Firecrest along with a couple Redwings, 4 Chiffchaffs and a flyover Lessser Redpoll.  Headed down to Beesands Ley for the October WeBS count. It is too top heavy with Mute Swans and Canada Geese for my liking. 17 Gadwalls and 23 Coots were counted.

                       Grey Seal with a nice sized Plaice for it's breakfast off Beesands.

Saturday morning saw the arrival of storm Brian whose winds strengthened through the day. First light I got to Start Point where I did a seawatch in the company of Dell and Mark D. Our expectations were not high. Conditions were clear,  it was too blowy and had too much west in it. We only saw single Manx and Balearic Shearwater but the sea was impressive.

                                           View from below Start Point Lighthouse.

In the afternoon I thought I would give Thurlestone Bay a look. The seas were mighty but nothing seen. I went down to South Huish Marsh and luckily bumped into Nick Townsend who had just found a Grey Phalarope on the near pool. Not too surprising given the conditions but great to see all the same.

                                               Surfs up, bit messy off Thurlestone.

From here went a bit off piste in birding terms and had a look at the bays in Outer Hope, South Sands and North Sands ( the latter two are in Salcombe ). No hoped for sheltering Leach's Petrels, Grey Phalaropes or Sabines Gulls in any of them but worth a try.

                                        Outer Hope, sheltered but nothing doing.

View towards Rickam Common, East Portlemouth from North Sands, Salcombe. 500 metres away but an hours drive via Kingsbridge in the summer.

And so to yesterday which was memorable. Still a windy day and at 08:40 i arrived at Bob's Car Park, Thurlestone. Looking across the bay towards the rock almost the first bird i saw was a superb Leach's Petrel flying inside it and towards Beacon Point. Kept my eye on it but it got lost to view below the cliffs and i did not see it again having hoped it would reappear in the bay. This great start fizzled to nothing and aftr 90 minutes it was clear i had been lucky with the Petrel as there was really nothing else around.
It was time to go home for some much neglected chores but then i had a phone call about news of a Siberian Stonechat at Start Point on the Devon Birds website. I Had to go out for this and walked down to the light where i saw my old friend Richard Archer who had found it with Andrew Dodd. I went back up the road with them and they showed me where it had been but there was no sign and they had to move on. Alan Doidge turned up and eventually we saw a very pale Stonechat on some distant bracken. There it was ! It was distant, elusive and the light in the drizzle was awful. We could not even be sure this was the same bird. Eventually it came closer and we were surprised how grey it was. Alan got as many photos as he could. To start with i think we had a little doubt but eventually we ( or certainly myself ) saw enough things to agree with Richard and Andy. I took a back of camera shot and put it on twitter and the fairly rapid responses were all positive, some to the point of saying what is putative about it. On reflection these people were unintentionally fooled by a photo which made the rump look buff by the time it had got from Start Point to twitterland. In the evening Alan mailed me some of his best photos and it was dawning that the bird was extremely similar to recent individuals at Dungeness and Richmond Park. These were first thought by many to be Eastern Stonechats but DNA analysis proved them to be Common Stonechats to many peoples surprise. On this simple blog i do not have the want to go through the process of identification, why its what it is etc etc. I will hold my hand up and say i was fooled like i am at least once every time i go birding but its usually between me and myself ! It was a great, educational bird that i enjoyed watching with Alan who still holds the distinction of finding and identifying Devon's last Siberian Stonechat at Soar in October 2012. Hopefully it will stick around for a few days, it is well worth seeing. It might even crap on a wall, the sample can be sent off and it proves to be a ' stejnegeri ' eastern Stonechat. That would blow stonechat id apart............dream on  !

Good links from here for anyone wanting more re these grey type Stonechats https://www.devonbirds.org/news/bird_news/devon_bird_sightings?blogEntry=15821

                                           Common Stonechat, photo by Alan Doidge