Leave no Tern un-stoned
After RBA weekly reviewer Mark Golley’s feature article regarding his heroic failure in dipping the Shetland Pine Grosbeak earlier this year, we bring you another epic twitching tale ~ as Rob Lambert charts his recent bids to enjoy a moment or two with Northumberland’s entry in the “Bird of 2013” competition…
I’m in the midst of an all-consuming passionate affair at the moment. It is with a tern. Well, actually, more like the ‘image’ or ‘idea’ of a tern. We keep passing like ships in the night. So it is unfulfilled. No ‘brief encounter’ as yet for this couple. I’ve been surrounded by flocks of Bridled Terns in Western Australia, year upon year. That’s all well and good, and jolly uplifting, but I want to see one in Britain. Most of my birding mates have.
So why not me?
Last Tuesday I was sat at Seahouses at 1.45pm, awaiting a 2pm boat, as the Bridled Tern was showing well to many, near the jetty on Inner Farne. I got to the island to hear that I had missed it by 20mins. That time period is crucial, so remember it. Worst of all I heard that news from that smug triumvirate of Galvin, Hackett and Lawrence, the Pompey, Julius Caesar and Crassus of British birding (I’ll let you figure out who is who). With Imperial authority they pronounced that the bird would return, for sure, in 20 mins or so, and sailed off. I stood on the jetty and stared at roosting terns. As the 20 mins turned into hours, an Atlantic Grey Seal hauled out to peruse us and a Great Black-backed Gull butchered a young Black-headed Gull in the channel. There were scraps and fights and territorial disputes everywhere, the life and death of a day in the Colosseum.
provide a 'post dip' photo!
Then the weather began to deteriorate, not suddenly, more steadily. By 4pm it was raining, and by 5pm it was heavy rain. By 7pm, still unbridled, we were soaked. The National Trust wardens had shut the island at 3.30pm as the terns ‘get skittish in the rain’ (they should toughen up). So birders were now trapped in a sort of grim, sodden, no-man’s land of the jetty. No toilets, no shelter, we huddled together like Emperor Penguins, occasionally rotating to give those on the outside respite from the rain and time in the middle. At 7.20pm a boat appeared. The majority of us could take no more, cold, tired, sore and soaked. We departed at 7.30pm.
At 7.52pm the Bridled Tern turned up. Missed it by 20mins again.
It was a horrid drive home, semi-naked because all our clothes were saturated, and the car steamed up like that of two teenage lovers parked up in a remote lay-by. That was attempt number one.
This past Saturday we headed up to Northumberland again, this time through the night, for first light at Cresswell Pond. Expectation was high, no boat trips needed now. We had shot up the temperature gradient. Hour upon hour of glorious sunshine passed, quality banter, Ruddy Shelducks, foraged food and the knowledge that, as the crowd built, if you made a mercy dash to Cresswell Ices parlour you would surely lose your parking spot in the northern car-park, defended since dawn from Vandals and Visi-Goths.
By lunchtime, most had eaten all the food they had brought for the day, and unease was mounting. Then, for those with an RBA pager, news came that the Tern was now on a day-trip to Teeside, at Saltholme RSPB, which as someone pointed out had a damn good café!
Around 80 cars departed south at the same time, leaving only those with ‘other’ pagers wondering by the wayside. For much of its length the A19 hosted ornithological ‘wacky races’. Then disaster, as the car-borne teams ground to a halt courtesy of the Highways Agency and a rolling road closure. The delay cost us about 20+mins and yes, you guessed it, we arrived at Saltholme RSPB in convoy, peppering gravel, to miss the Bridled Tern by 20mins. We did at least wreak some sort of revenge by buying the café out of all food and drink, clogging the loos, disturbing alpacas (you had to be there!) and thronging the boardwalk to the terror of families out for a nice stroll amongst chemical factories, cooling towers and gas flames.
Then early evening, the message came through that after a beak full of industrial smoke the Bridled Tern had fled back north to the purer air of Cresswell/Chevington. So, back north we went, through that Tyne Tunnel yet again, scrabbling around for change (or seriously considering buying a tunnel weekly pass), to the place where the day had started. No news on arrival, but birders rapidly climbed the dune tops to scope the bay and pond much to the surprise of sunbathing families.
Then news it was back at Chevington, and off we raced again, about 15 mins drive further north on small bendy roads, and a run down to the hides…..to find we had all missed it again by, yes, 20mins. We loitered at Chevington until dusk, then drove south and home, in unbridled dejection. Most affairs are consummated. This one isn’t.
Yet……….
Rob Lambert (on behalf of the Tuesday and Saturday tern-less club)
July 2013
