Brown Hairstreaks 9th August 2025

A casual visit to Farmoor Reservoir this morning to check on the presence and well being of the storm blown European Shag that has been there since the 5th of August, proved positive on both counts. While there I met Brian and Mark and after they got some photos of the Shag we decided to abandon the increasingly populated and windy reservoir and head for the more tranquil environs of the RSPB's Otmoor Reserve at Beckley.

Brian had not seen a Brown Hairstreak this year and was keen to rectify the matter and Otmoor is as good a place as any to see one, so a half hour drive brought us to the secluded car park at Otmoor and with not much further ado we took to the Roman Road, which is actually a narrow bridleway running down behind the car park.

Crucially it is also sheltered due to the trees, bushes and rampant high summer vegetation forming  thick, impenetrable ramparts that grow on either side of its narrow course. 

Home for Brown Hairstreaks

Although windy today you would never know it here as there is no wind disturbance whatsoever and with the increasingly sunny periods, it was warm  too and as a consequence a micro climate develops that is immensely attractive to insects of all sorts including the much desired Brown Hairstreak.

A previous solo visit a couple of weeks ago had brought the delight of no less than four Brown Hairstreaks here so hopefully this mid morning visit would be just as productive. 

From my experiences on previous visits I have a favourite short section along the bridleway that becomes a sun trap from mid morning to mid afternoon.This is where I choose to look for the hairstreaks or should I say wait for them to come down from the larger trees to nectar on the frothy white wild angelica flowers, punk purple thistle heads and any remaining blackberry flowers, or less often, to sup honeydew from ripening blackberries or the trailing green, triangular leaves of greater bindweed. 

We stood at the appointed spot but of hairstreaks there was not a sign. Visits such as this often require a long wait for one to appear although on other occasions, admittedly not often, one can be lucky and encounter that familiar ginger triangle of delight almost immediately. Today was not to be one of these.

Brian decided to walk to the end of the bridleway as the hairstreaks can literally appear anywhere.He was gone but ten minutes when a hairstreak flew down.I almost missed it, so small and inconsequential, disappearing from view into a tangle of grass and bindweed. Had I really seen one or had I imagined it? I moved closer and confirmation came as a Brown Hairstreak flew up out of the tangle and after agonisingly fluttering around looking to re-settle, the orange flashes on its brown upperwings revealing it was a female, flew higher and disappeared over the tops of the surrounding blackthorn bushes.

I was in two minds, deflated that it had not remained but excited, as I always am, to have seen one of these elusive and rare butterflies. I called Brian to inform him and he came back to stand with us and hope the butterfly might return but of course it didn't

We waited for quite some time with no more excitement. Gatekeepers, Meadow Browns and a flashy Red Admiral were the only other butterflies we saw.

I checked an adjacent area of greater bindweed and the bright yellow daisy like heads of common fleabane that had proved productive in the past but there was to be no luck there either and eventually we decided to walk a further few hundred metres to the end of the bridleway, as a passing butterflier had told us of a sighting of one  down there feeding on a thistle.

As we did we passed the patch of bindweed and fleabane once more and from  the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a tiny orange and brown butterfly facing us, perched at eye level on a bindweed leaf. Gatekeepers can  look superficially similar to a Brown Hairstreak but this was not one.

It was a female Brown Hairstreak, unmistakeable and absolutly pristine, sunning itself with wings wide open, which is unusual but allowing me to see those two delicious crescents of rich orange on each of its brown upperwings.

I shouted to the others in the spontaneous excitement of discovery, pointing and crying out 

Look! Look! There's one!

At the very last moment here was a Brown Hairstreak and even better at eye level and in perfect condition.

For the next hour the tiny insect sunned itself, fed and fluttered around to various positions, high and low in the small enclosed area in front of us. For most of the time it behaved as they normally do, perching with wings closed revealing the lovely ginger undersurface of the wings, crossed with a wide band of darker brownish ginger and bordered by the iconic thin white lines from whence the second part of its name derives.

At other times it opened its wings to accept the heat of the sun on its furry body and we could see the full glory of the upperwings, each marked with a single splash of orange.

Eventually even we had to accept we had taken enough photos and subsequently stood back to enjoy the experience. I think maybe the hairstreak remained so long here in order to get away from the attentions of the males that reside higher up in the ash trees above. 

Brian found two Willow Emerald Damselflys, one clinging to an iris blade, the other hanging from a willow shoot. Needle thin and with intricately cross veined wings, they clung to their individual support with bent legs, their metallic green bodies and diaphanous wings almost invisible to the naked eye against the surrounding vegetation.

After at least an hour another Brown Hairstreak descended  to feed on an angelica flower head right in front of us.

This latecomer proved to be a male and a rather worn and tatty individual at that with underwings mouse brown and far less intensely colourful than those of the female, currently clinging upside down to a blackberry further above and hidden in the shade. If only he had known!

He did not stop for long and disappeared in a spiralling tussle with a truculent Speckled Wood, the two insects careering up and over the bushes of bramble festooned blackthorn.

A lady enthusiast came down the ride and we pointed out the female hairstreak clinging to the blackberry but she pointed out that there was another one above it! So now we had seen three females and one male.

The female hairstreak remained as ever, glued to its blackberry. It had been here, unmoving for over forty five minutes and by the time I left the butterfly had been on permanent view for over two hours, a record length of a hairstreak sighting for me.

It was time to go. Reluctant as ever I departed as the sun shone down the ride and all was well in my world as I  made my way back to the car park.

The Brown Hairstreak, the last of the hairstreaks to appear and in my opinion the best of our five native hairstreak species had been well and truly discovered and enjoyed, bringing another pleasant memory to keep safe through the months ahead.

We Stalk the Stork 4th August 2025

As mentioned in my previous blog about our twitch to Walberswick to see a Zitting Cisticola, a Black Stork was but thirty minutes drive away and both myself and Mark(P) decided it was an absolute must to go and see. For Mark it would be a lifer and a British tick and for me only the second I have seen in Britain.The first was ten years ago at Spurn see here in August 2015.

Already enthused by our success with the Zitting Cisticola we headed for Boyton Marshes in high spirits, where the Black Stork, a juvenile, had been discovered in a large waterfilled dyke on the 22nd of July and where it had remained ever since.

Even more enticing was the fact it was ridiculously approachable, granting views down to only a  few metres and totally untroubled by a regular procession of admirers come to pay homage. Black Storks have been recorded in Britain 295 times before and normally being shy and wary often prove elusive, very mobile and hard to pin down, so this one apparently contentedly ensconced in a dyke and unwilling to move anywhere else was a very attractive proposition.

Black Storks breed in scattered locations across Europe, predominantly in Portugal and Spain but also in Estonia in the north to Poland, Germany, France, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy and Greece in the south.They are a long distance migrant spending the winter in sub Saharan Africa, most birds migrating from Europe to Africa via The Straits of Gibralter which is the shortest sea crossing.

Birdguide's directions took you to the RSPB's Boyton Marshes where you parked your car and then commenced a two mile walk along the sea wall to view the favoured dyke. Yet another long walk was far from enticing after our mile walk out on shingle and sand to the cisticola but thankfully Adrian, another of my twitching pals, knew of a shorter unofficial route whereby we could drive much closer to the location and only face a quarter mile walk out to the dyke and sea wall.

Looking back from the seawall across the fields to where we parked the car beyond the trees.The dyke
is in the centre of the image

After a stop for a coffee to keep body and soul together we put Adrian's directions into the satnav and followed a tortuous and winding course through some of Suffolk's rural lanes which grew ever narrower, leafy and more isolated until we came at last to a dead end. We could drive no further but were able to park the car without obstructing a gate which barred vehicles but allowed pedestrian access to a footpath, leading out to and across a vast field of stubble to a dyke which lay below the distant sea wall.

The weather had changed and the predicted increase in wind speed was becoming all too apparent as, following the path we passed a wood of poplars, the mass rustling of the leaves in the wind sounding just like waves beating on a seashore and then traversed a prairie like acreage of fallow land.The sun had long gone to be replaced by light cloud but thankfully the wind had not brought any rain.

We were none too sure if we were in fact in the right place but we could see a distant birder silhouetted on the sea wall and looking down into what we presumed was the dyke. As we got closer it was obvious he was looking at something which we hoped was the Black Stork.We would soon find out.

Crossing a small bridge that spanned the water filled dyke I looked to my left along the dyke's bank and laid eyes on what looked like a brown lump amongst the massed pale stalks of dead reeds and faded  grass at the water's edge

What's that? I exclaimed

That's it  replied Mark 

It appeared to be asleep

As easy and simple as that. There, to much relief was the stork, hunkered down in the lee of the bank out of the wind. Much obscured amongst the dead reed stems and rank bankside grass, its dark brown feathers appeared as an indeterminate shapeless mass but checking through my bins I made out its head, huge bill and bulging breast feathers. After our very recent experience of the tiny cisticola, the sheer size and bulk of the stork took me unawares, having forgotten just how big storks are.

Mark went up onto the seawall and began chatting to the other birder but I walked along the bank of the dyke, opposite to the stork and stood back from the edge waiting for the stork to wake up.Its current position was no use for any photos as it was partially obscured by the vegetation.

Further along from the stork the vegetation ceased and there was open water.If the stork moved that way I would get to see it unobscured and still only metres away. For once my luck was in, as after a few minutes the stork roused itself, walking slowly and ponderously under the far bank towards the open water, probing the water and vegetation for prey. 

It was in no hurry and seemed to take forever moving forward but I could see it would eventually clear the vegetation and be in open water with just the dyke's bank for background. This would be ideal for photos

And so it came to be and the stork was fully revealed as it waded through the shallow water of the dyke looking for food. 

I made the most of this opportunity while it was thus exposed, clicking away with my camera and  enjoying being so close to this seemingly unconcerned huge and rare bird.

Eventually it stopped, stood for a while, then turned and took strides back the way it had come and once more walked into the vegetation it had recently left. 

For the ten minutes it was in open water I really could not have asked for more.

Adult Black Storks are black above and white below with a red bill and pink legs but this was a juvenile and the plumage was not so colourful being a matt dark brown above and white below, its bill pale greyish olive with a noticeable orange base. There were even vestiges of down clinging to the feathers of its mantle so it must be very young.

I rejoined Mark on the seawall and we walked along to come level with the stork but it had moved to the nearer bank and was out of sight.Other birders who had the misfortune to make the long trek out from the RSPB car park joined us and eventually it wandered into view for a brief period before becoming invisible once more under the near bank.

It was windy and exposed up on top of the seawall as the wind was now fulfilling its forecasted increase in strength. The seawall was surprisingly  unpopulated and there were never more than three or four other birders with us. possibly due to the long walk required to get here. 

The Seawall.The dyke on the left and saltmarsh on the right

Mark decided he had seen as much as he wanted of the stork and set off for the car to hear the closing overs of the England v India Test Match  - but I was here for one thing only. The Black Stork. The views from the seawall were to my mind unsatisfactory so I left the three other birders standing with me and walked back to the bridge over the dyke, crossed it and made my way along the edge of a vast field on the other side of the dyke to bring me level with where I assumed the stork to be.

The edge of the stubble field and the dyke

The vast field of stubble

From here I had an unobstructed view across the water and soon located the stork, immobile and hunkered down in thick and dead aquatic vegetation. It was hunched in repose, its long bill snuggled down into its loose breast feathers, a picture of contentment.

Its behaviour throughout consisted of short periods of casual feeding followed by much longer ones of inactivity, so much so that there had been speculation that the apparently lethargic bird was unwell but the fact it is still alive and showing no ill effects as I write this seventeen days later from when it ws discoverd, confirms this is not so. It is just a very large bird, the supply of food in the dyke must be more than adequate and as a consequence it has no need to rush about or behave in a frantic manner.

The other birders I had left on the seawall, noticing I could obviously see the stork whereas they could not  walked round to join me.Two local ladies with their husbands, not really birders but interested enough to come and see the stork also joined me, evidence that its extended stay had made it something of a celebrity in these parts, 

As often happens they started to ask me questions about the stork, such as where it had come from, why had it ended up here and what would it do, which I tried to answer and gradually as the stork slumbered on the conversation broadened into much wider ranging topics and by the time I bid my farewells we were at the stage of handing out sweets.

These unplanned encounters always leave a pleasant feeling of goodwill and such natural relaxed conversation with total strangers is as much an enjoyable part of twitching as is actually seeing the bird. 

As I left the rain commenced to fall lightly but did not look like it would stop as the sky was now a solid darkening grey as I made my way back to Mark and joined him in the car, learning that England had lost the match by six runs

Never mind.

We had definitely won today and my depressing run of twitching ill fortune had finally come to an end.

The Zitterbug at Walberswick 4th August 2025

A Zitting Cisticola in typical pose that I saw in Morocco in 2013

On Tuesday the 2nd of July a Zitting Cisticola was found on the coast at Foreness Point which is near Margate in Kent.This was only the ninth record of this species in Britain.

Unable to travel on the day I made plans to go and see it the next day, as early as possible.Sadly although it was reported in the early morning on Wednesday, by the time I got there at 10am it had been seen to fly off strongly to the northeast and my journey, anticipating a new British tick was to prove fruitless.

I have been on a bad run lately, having dipped a Savannah Sparrow in Shetland and a Song Sparrow in Yorkshire as well as only hearing an Eastern Bonelli's Warbler in Dungeness and now missing a Zitting Cisticola in Kent.

Such a rare bird was unlikely to provide another opportunity for quite some time or so I thought. However whilst staying with my twitching pal Mark(R) at his house in Yorkshire over the weekend news came through of another Zitting Cisticola being found at Walberswick in Suffolk on Sunday the 3rd of August. 

Could this possibly be the same bird as the one at Foreness Point? This individual was singing and displaying in similar fashion to that one

Mark(R) who had already seen a Zitting Cisticola said I should go immediately but I was on a deadline to meet Mrs U who was returning from a family visit to Glasgow on this day and I was under strict instruction to meet her off the train at 8.30pm in Oxford. If I went for the cisticola immediately as Mark suggested I would have little time to spend looking for the bird before having to leave Walberswick to rendezvous with Mrs U in Oxford.

I told Mark(R) I would go first thing tomorrow, Monday, to try and see it. No matter what.

During Sunday I rang Mark(P) my other birding accomplice who lives but a few miles from me and told him about the cisticola and as further incentive adding the fact a Black Stork was also residing in a dyke just thirty minutes away from the cisticola. Being a novice lister he needed both birds and was naturally keen to go.

Mark(P) has problems sleeping at the moment as do I, so we discussed our departure time on Monday.

Five am OK for you? I ventured

Sure. If I  am awake earlier do you fancy leaving then?

No problem. I'll leave my phone on.Just ping me,

My phone pinged with a text at 3.15am on Monday

Be with you in 30mins.

I was ready and waiting when Mark arrived at my house and we set off in the solid re-assurance of his Landrover Discovery as the sky began to lighten.

Already, even at this early hour there were a surprising number of cars on the rural roads of Oxfordshire and by the time we made the Motorways it was full on traffic, all in a hurry. I shuddered and thanked my lucky stars that now retired such torture was no longer mine to bear

We made a stop for fuel and refreshments in Cambridgeshire and at around 7am wound our way down a narrow lane through Walberswick to cross the small River Dunwich via a very narrow bridge and came to a halt in Cliff Field Car Park. This was the designated location on Birdguides map.We paid our parking fee online and headed southwest as instructed by Birdguides, along a path that crossed through a cluster of beachhuts and tents, greeting some bemused campers as we passed and then snaked through the top of some dunes with the sea on one side and the salt marshes of the nature reserve on the other and through which ran the narrow river.The weather was benign with occasional sun and a light wind and the location quite beautiful and atmospheric.A loneliness of  sea and sky, to paraphrase John Masefield.

The Zitting Cisticola's home

We could see a cluster of birders in the distance and headed for them.On arrival we were informed the cisticola had been seen earlier, both perched and displaying with its zig zagging, undulating flight but  had  now been out of view for some time. Inwardly I groaned as, desperately tired from our early start I was now required to cope with standing for an indeterminate wait whilst my anxiety levels grew exponentially

Not for the first time I wondered if I was getting too old for this twitching malarkey

Who was I kidding? I knew full well that as soon as I clapped my tired eyes on this inoffensive little bird, truly unexceptional in its streaky brown plumage but exceptional in its rarity, all recriminations would be banished.

We stood amongst twenty other birders and waited and waited.

Scanning for the cisticola. Mark(P) in the foreground

Two Spoonbills flew past us towards a small flash of freshwater but no small birds showed themselves in the grass apart from some Reed Buntings, a Sedge Warbler and a Common Whitethroat. I noted that everyone else had a scope.We had been told a scope was un-necessary but it became obvious it was if the cisticola was ever to perch on top of the long grass or reeds which were now its home. Having walked over a kilometre across the sandy dunes we were reluctant to return to the car for the scopes.Why we did not just put them on our backs when we first walked out I have no idea but that is what tiredness and four tedious hours in a car can do to you. 

We were stood next to a well spoken gent, dressed in a pair of baggy corduroys, brogues that had seen better days and a rumpled tweed jacket that clearly had seen a lot of action judging by the lining that was parting company from the rest of the jacket. A well used pair of bins, held together with tape hung around his neck. I could only describe him as being a throw back from a previous era, the kind of birder I recall from my long distant childhood and mildly eccentric but he knew his birds and was to prove very helpful.

Various people were constantly looking out across the grass and marshland but no one had seen the bird re-appear. Almost forty five minutes had elapsed when a stirring amongst birders to my right indicated that the bird was visible again but I had no idea where to look other than across the grass and marshland.Of course I saw nothing.

Frustratingly everyone lapsed back into silence  and it was obvious the bird had gone back into the grass.

Mark decided to go back to get his scope from the car, jokingly instructing me to try not to see the bird while he was gone.

Ten minutes after his departure.Well you can guess what happened

A shout came from the well spoken gent to my left

I can hear it! It's flying!

I looked out across the grass, searching for it

You are looking too low he told me

It's in the sky. he added

I raised my bins

No, higher, it's in the grey cloud

I raised my bins even further

Higher, it's now in the blue

Finally there it was, seemingly miles up in the sky. No wonder I had initially failed to locate it. I had never expected it to be so high.  A tiny bird, bouncing as if on elastic up and down in the clear air, calling zit zit zit as it flew. It went left, it went right, then away and then towards us, forever  undulating and zig zagging and a nightmare to follow but I hung on and after about a minute it descended to the ground and disappeared into the grass.

This is what  it would have looked like if we saw it perched.
Image taken by me in Morocco in 2013

What a relief to have at last seen it 

Now I knew where to look for it  I was confident I would be able to find and see it on its next flight

Mark returned

He must have guessed

Don't tell me!

So I did

Don't worry it will be up again I re-assured him

And so it proved and Mark was happy. A lifer for him and another British tick, the first for this year, for me

Looking out from where we stood on the shingle ridge and across the grass there was the narrow River Dunwich and beyond more grassland and then a line of Walberswick's upmarket idiosynchratic houses on the skyline with a Saxon church in their midst.These were to prove the guide points for future flights of the cisticola of which there were half a dozen to come while we were present

Instructions such as:  

It's over the cottage with the pointed thatched roof. 

It's over the church. 

It's over the house with the solar panels. 

All were to prove very useful in locating what was a small, at times dot like, hyperactive bird, in my bins.

Sadly there are no photos as the bird was too distant and too hard  to follow.Needless to say a  scope was irrelevant as the bird was only seen in its erratic zigzag flight which was impossible to follow with a scope..

We never saw it perched but  saw it well enough when performing its display flight and calling on at least half a dozen occasions

Both of us decided to settle for these flight views as the wind was increasing and because of this it was extremely unlikely that the cisticola would be seen perching on the tops of the grass or reeds any time soon

Also known as Streaked Fantailed Warbler a far more satis factory name in my opinion, its distribution covers southern Europe and North Africa where it inhabits grassland and for the most part is resident slthough it is slowly expanding northwards. Very rare overshoots from its normal range, such as this individual in Suffolk, are a mystery if it is non migratory and its origin can only be guessed at.

.This was species 539 for my British List

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