HE WHO HESITATES DIPS

I've not spent a lot of time birding recently, but the time I have spent hasn't added to my Surrey list, which was coming along well, but has now totally dried up these past couple of weeks.

It didn't help missing out on two Avocets that appeared on the Holmethorpe patch yesterday morning. First seen by Graham James at around 6.00am, they were swimming around in the Water Colour Lagoons before relocating on Spynes Mere. Graham sent me the news via a text just after 6.30am, but I didn't see it until I got up a couple of hours later.

Now, in the past I would have dropped everything, put on some clothes and dashed out to Spynes to see them. But not today. No, I thought about it and knowing my wife would look at me with utter disdain at my ridiculous haste, I decided not to rush. In fact, I took my time in the shower, made a second cup of tea and read a few emails before eventually setting off just before 10.30am.

Unbeknown to me, the birds decided they had stayed long enough and took off, heading eastwards at 10.22am, never to be seen again. I missed them by about eight minutes - about the same time it takes to make and then drink a cup of tea.

It will be no surprise to learn I was mightily pissed off. I went back home, and tried to put it to the back of my mind with the rest of 'the dips that really pissed me off' memories stored away there.

Annie could see how disappointed I was in missing out on these two Avocets, so she suggested we go for a late afternoon walk around Thursley Common. The hope was I would connect with a Hen Harrier. A ringtail had been seen for the last two days there.

In all the trips I have ever made to Thursley – and they are many – I have never, ever seen a Hen Harrier there. And guess what? I didn't see one on this occasion either. One was seen between 11.00am and midday, but not from 4pm until 5.45pm, when we were there.

For once, I wasn't looking for a Shrike, but that's when you tend to bump into them. And that is what happened here. The Great Grey Shrike was the same one I saw back in October and then in January – a very smart individual that favours the Ockley Common area of Thursley. We got great views of it as we walked along the tumulus area of the Common, and we followed it around Ockley Common on a loop back towards the car park. The Shrike turned the day around for me.

I doubt whether I will ever get to see a Hen Harrier quartering this site - it would mean having to spend literally a whole day here, with no guarantee of a positive result. Can't see me doing that...

A SHAG DROPS IN AT HOLMETHORPE

I could have gone for a predictable innuendo-style headline – QUICK VISIT TO HOLMETHORPE FOR A SHAG or FANCY A SHAG but, to be honest, I couldn't think of anything that was actually genuinely funny.

I used to write plenty of headlines when I worked at Racing Post and freelanced at The Independent. A great headline is one of life's pleasures when working for a newspaper. The good ones are remembered for many years. 

When The Sun, under the editorship of Kelvin MacKenzie, went with 'GOTCHA', after Maggie gave the order to sink the Belgrano during the Falklands conflict – whether it was actually the right thing to do or not, considering more than 300 Argentinians lost their lifes on that boat – it did much to boost morale in Britain at the time. 

Similarly, the same newspaper wrote 'Will the last person to leave Britain please turn off the lights' on the eve of the 1992 General Election when it looked as if Labour, under Neil Kinnock, was going to win. This headline had the desired effect of lowering morale across the country and quite possibly trashed Kinnock's hopes of becoming Prime Minister.

There are others, of course, that just make you laugh. My favourite, again from The Sun, was when Elton John married his partner, David Furnish. Above a photo of the pair posing for photographers before they tied the knot, the headline read 'ELTON TAKES DAVID UP THE AISLE'.

Outrageous, tongue-in-cheek, call it what you want – it was memorable, to say the least.

So, my Shag headline isn't the work of genius, but then it doesn't involved wars, politicians or Elton John. This Shag is just a sea bird that has dropped in at my local patch. It is the first one we've had for a while – more than two years, in fact – but it is a welcome edition to the Holmethorpe species list, which is up to 94 for the year now. Pretty good going, in my view.

When word got out – I saw the news first via a Johnny Allan tweet – it was parked up on the raft in the middle of Mercers Lake. By the time I got there, the Shag was happily swimming around on the water. An adult, by the looks of it, the black plumage had a greenish tinge to it. Hopefully, it will stay a few more days to allow other people to come and see it .

NOTHING TO REPORT, APART FROM A RED KITE...

The above headline says it all. It's been a nearly three weeks since my last post and if it wasn't for an urge just to write something, it would probably have been another week or more before I bothered to tap away on the keyboard.

So, what's been happening? A lot of thinking but no birding, that's what. After the satisfaction of catching the Red-rumped Swallow at Unstead at the beginning of the month, there have been scant reasons to step outside the door ever since. For one thing the weather has been ordinary, to put it mildly. Despite torrential rain on occasions, plus a typically brisk wind every day and low temperatures - a typical British summer's day - there have been few good birds dropping in anywhere to warrant me dropping everything to go and see them. The majority of good/interesting sightings have opted to stick to the coast.

It's the predictable problem of living in a land-locked county. We in Surrey get excited by birds other county watchers wouldn't even bother raising their bins to. Black-tailed Godwits, Ringed Plovers, Turnstones, Sanderlings. I've seen all of these in Kent this year - they're standard fare anywhere along the coastline of south-east England. You don't have to look hard to see one. Gold dust, however, in Surrey - wader and Surrey is an unusual juxtaposition in the general scheme of birding things. They aren't rare birds per se, but unless they drop in at Holmethorpe, I find it hard to raise the enthusiasm to traipse off to another Surrey site just to say I've seen one.

There have been a few five-star birds at other sites, notably the Black Kite over Beddington found by Johnny Allan a couple of weeks back - what a fantastic bird to discover cruising over your patch! Alas, no such luck at Holmethorpe. It has been a rather barren eight to ten weeks or so. Despite this bleak summer outlook, there have been more bird species seen at Holmethorpe so far this year than in 2010. And we know, by the law of averages, a real stonker could turn up at anytime.

We know that to be true, but it all takes time and effort. Holmethorpe has a number of dedicated patch watchers doing the rounds, but even they have been absent on a number of days this past couple of months. There's only so much repetition and disappointment a human being can take in one go! What's happened to all the birds - have the Maltese shot them all?


I did see a Red Kite on Walton Heath golf course last week, but it was a golfer called Tom Kite, wearing a red shirt. That's as close as I got to seeing a decent birdie in Surrey recently (terrible puns, but I couldn't resist it). Red Kite was kept company by the Greater-breasted Course Official. An impressive defiance of the laws of gravity by anyone's standards...

My main task in the coming weeks, apart from catching up with the above birds I haven't seen in Surrey this year, which also include a number of other elusive species - Spotted Flycatcher, Firecrest, Tree Sparrow (a Beddington gimmee), Yellow-legged Gull (another a Beddington gimmee) and Wood Sandpiper - is to put pencil to paper for the first time in more than a year. I intend to put together a few drawings and perhaps a painting for the Birdwatch magazine art competition. I've got about six weeks to get my act together and execute the images I've worked out in my head. If they work out OK, I'll enter them. If they aren't what I think are good enough, they'll be kept under lock and key. I'll keep you posted.