Great Bustard

Cloudy with frequent light rain, 7°, light SE.

A trip out to Letcombe Regis this morning to see a Great Bustard.

The bird has been frequenting an area in Letcombe Regis since the weekend and may have been present in South Oxfordshire for a couple of months.

The bird is from the “Great Bustard re-introduction Project” in Wiltshire.

Alan visited the site earlier in the week and have included one of his photos here.

Whatever its provenance, still a good bird to see.

Bird Race 1992

Article featured in UKAEA Harwell News.

On 9 May 1992 across the country, Birders and twitchers were likely to be spotted behaving in a frantic manner racing around trying to notch up as many species as possible. It was the day of the nationwide “County Bird Race” sponsored by “In Focus”. The idea was that teams of four Birders attempted to find and identify as many species as possible in 24 hours within their county. That year, two members of AEA Technology, Group member Peter Pool and Paul Chandler were competing in the event. Peter was a design draughtsman at Culham and was a veteran of the event whilst for Paul the computer consultant with ETSU it was to be his first time. Both were experienced birdwatchers, Peter had been very involved with the RSPB for a long time and Paul was a self-confessed twitcher also very much into ‘green’ issues. With two other team members, Peter and Paul were to compete against three other teams in Oxfordshire. The goal was to find 100 species. The current county record was 99 species. The main aim of the event was to raise money for two charities, the county’s wildlife trust BBONT, and the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP)’s Spanish Steppes Appeal (to save the Great Bustard). The previous year, 100 teams took part and raised £10,000 in cash for the ICBP. 

Back in Time – Chumming for Black Grouse

On the 6th March 1993 our team took a late winter trip to Scotland on a twitch for a Ross’s Gull near Inverness but unfortunately it was not there after the long journey north (fortunately I had seen one in 88 in Devon). We hired a car from a local dealer where my daughter then worked, a Ford Granada automatic a bit of a novelty so we all had a drive of it during our trip. Geoff and Roger Wyatt, Martin Hallam, Justin Taylor and myself all went north and decided to make a week end of it so after dipping the gull we continued up to Grantown on Spey to clean up on some Scottish specialities.

We arrived at Grantown and booked in to a B&B and then went to one of the local hotels to get some food and a few beers, as luck would have it there was a two piece band performing in the hotel that night complete with a drum machine, guitar etc, doing covers of pop songs from the 60’s and 70’s which fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your view) we all knew the words to so as the beer flowed so did our vocal prowess led by our choirmaster Geoff.

We even complimented vocally the drum machine intros and sang along with just about every track they played and at one point the guitarist broke a string but we managed to fill in on the song until the guitar was restrung. Come the end of the night we even got applause from band themselves and some of the audience and needless to say we were well oiled!

This was one of several trips to Scotland we made for various rarities and we must admit that apart from the birds (‘cos they are in our notebooks) the memories of the rest of the trips tend to be rather vague and especially as influenced by alcohol. On one trip we camped in Grantown cemetery for a night as we could not get a B&B, luckily it was not Halloween that night.

OK, so the following morning we are out early, all with various degrees of a hangover and Roger being particularly worse for wear. One of our target species was Black Grouse as Justin had not seen them before so we started a tour of potential sites. Every now and again we would have to stop for one of the passengers to get out of the car and regurgitate some of the previous nights intake, now at one point Roger said “stop the car”, he opened the passenger door and immediately regurgitate and at that point two male Black Grouse flew from right to left over the car that proves the point that “chumming” and for Black Grouse inland can work.

Some irony here also as in the back seat Martin was sat on one side of the car and saw them, me sat on the other side saw them but Justin sat in the middle missed them and he was the one who needed to see them! However we did see some more on the trip so Justin did get his Black Grouse.

Overall we had a pretty good week end with Crested Tit, Scottish Crossbill, Golden Eagle, Ptarmigan, Red Grouse, Black Grouse, Snow Bunting, Iceland Gull, Goshawk, Hen Harrier, Capercallie, thousands of Pink-footed Geese, a Snow Goose, many Common Eider and a several Red Squirrel and thanks to Geoff Wyatt for his input on this one.

Back in Time – St Abbs Head

25th May 1993 saw 4 of us; Ian Lewington, Martin Hallam, Graham Etherington and I make for St Abbs Head in the borders for a Marmora’s Warbler.

If I recall it was a bit of a white knuckle ride as Graham was driving and he had a rather sporty looking car and I’m sure he was in contention for an F1 spot, racing along small country lanes to get us there.

Still we made St Abbs shortly after dawn and found the Marmora’s still present, it was a 1st summer male and a beauty of a bird.

St Abbs head is a national nature reserve on the coast of Berwickshire in the Scottish borders and a very scenic spot, also the home to a large seabird colony that nest on the cliffs that are part of the reserve, a place I would certainly visit again.

After taking our fill of the Marmora’s Warbler we decided to head back south and on the way back we decided to drop in on the Farne Islands as we had heard that “Elsie” the Lesser Crested Tern had been seen recently among the Tern colony there.

We got to Seahouses and managed to take the boat over to Inner Farne, the weather was good and the sea relatively calm. On arrival we spoke to one of the wardens present who said that Elsie had not been seen for a few days, none the less we would still make the most of a visit to these beautiful islands and take in the wealth of seabird’s present breeding on and around the islands.

We wound our way around the various footpaths on the island and constantly being attacked by Arctic Terns that were breeding close to the paths, Martin actually ended up with a small cut on his forehead from a Tern that made contact!

Whilst getting our fill of all the Terns and Auks that were around and scanning some of the coastal rocks I noticed a group of around 50 Sandwich Terns so I promptly set up my ‘scope and went through them one by one and to my surprise found one with a big orangey-yellow bill, that was Elsie!

I called the others over and we sat and enjoyed our 2nd tick of the day.

We stayed on the island a little longer to enjoy the many Terns and Auks present around and take in the atmosphere of the Farne islands.

A very satisfying day, in fact May 1993 was a superb month for rarities with a White Stork at Sidlesham, (Red-headed Bunting) Ipswich, Citrine Wagtail Fleet, Oriental Pratincole Gimmingham, the Marmora’s and Elsie, Great Reed Warbler Elmley, Sardinian Warbler Dungeness, and a Pacific Swift to round off the month at Cley, also other trips to Norfolk, Suffolk, Portland and the Oxon birdrace (107 species), almost 200 species seen that month and many miles driven!

Back in Time - Thrush bonanza

We arrived on Scilly on October 8th 1999 to the prospect of some good birds; we arrived at the airport on St Mary’s and were keen to get going.

We just dumped our luggage at the flat and went down to the quay straight away and boarded an inter-island boat for St Agnes where a Siberian Thrush was being seen. We arrived on Aggie and walked to the island of Gugh over the sand bar (that is reachable at low tide) where the bird was being seen in a small plantation. Milling around looking for about 20 minutes when a shout went up that the bird was flying, which it did, immediately past us. Great flight views were obtained and the bird then flew out of sight and that was that. The next bird to go for was a Short-toed Eagle that had taken up residency on the Eastern Isles. A boat was organised and Martin and I decided to go for it.

A nice steady boat ride out to the Eastern Isles produced the bird sat on one of the rocky outcrops (we did not land). With 2 good birds seen we decided to get back to the flat to get organised and get some food in. Within 4 hours of landing on Scilly we had seen Siberian Thrush, Short-toed Eagle, Peregrine and Hen Harrier. The Eagle stayed around and we saw it several more times over the islands.

There was also a White’s Thrush on St Agnes whether it was there when we went for the “Sibe” I don’t remember but the following day we were back on St Agnes where fortunately enough we got good views of the elusive White’s Thrush and an expected Red-breasted Flycatcher. We then saw the White’s on 2 more occasions that week a great bird to see.

Over the following week only one of our group had not seen the White’s and that was Lew. The best moment of this was Lew spent quite a few hours looking for the White’s but was having no luck. Later one evening Lew was reviewing his video footage on the TV from the days birding and the White’s Thrush appeared on the TV screen! What! The scenario had been that Lew left his video running while he walked over to talk to someone and the Thrush had walked through the field of view in the area his video was trained on. Fortunately he saw it later in the week but that would have been ironic if he had not seen it.



Friday the 15th dawned and out birding when a call went up for a male Blue Rock Thrush at Porthloo, fortunately we were not too far away and got there fairly quickly and the thrush was in view and it was a cracking male. In time several hundred birders had turned up and most had now seen Siberian Thrush, White’s Thrush and now Blue Rock Thrush all within a week, that’s Scilly for you.

Come the end of the holiday we were waiting at the airport for the plane back to the mainland when a shout went up for a Chimney Swift over St Mary’s we rushed out of the departure lounge and as we were on high ground we might be in with a chance as we still had a little time before the plane went. True to form our luck held and the Swift duly performed.

Over the 2 weeks the islands were blessed with quite a few other rare and scarce birds that were duly seen by all of us. Upland Sandpiper, Red-backed Shrike, Siberian Stonechat, Radde’s Warbler, Pallas’s Warbler, Yellow-browed Warbler, Firecrest, Ring Ousel, Long-eared Owl etc and rounded off with a Red-flanked Bluetail at Rame head in Cornwall on the way home, also several sightings of Monarch Butterfly on the islands and many other common migrants. That 2 week trip had 9 Thrush species and 3 ticks (the 3 thrushes for me) seen on Scilly which made an excellent 2 week holiday. Another great Scilly trip and looking forward to more.

Back in Time – Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

Mid afternoon on Sunday 19th October 1997 a message flashed on to the pager “Siberian Rubythroat ♂ Osmington Mills, Dorset”, the first mainland one since Durham 1975.

Within moments Geoff had phoned and in another 15 minutes we were on our way. At that point in time Geoff had a Peugeot 305 Diesel Turbo that went like the proverbial off a shovel and it’s the quickest I have ever got to Dorset (in less than 2 hours).

Normally I am not the hottest navigator (but that’s another story) but we got there in record time, we pulled up at the spot in Osmington to see a fair few cars already there. I noticed Martin Cade (Portland bird Obs warden) and a few other Dorset birders leaving and they indicated that the bird was still present. We walked through a gateway in to a field that had an area of hedge and scrub and the bird was apparently in there. I am not sure how long we waited but after a time the bird was seen and it was a spanking ♂ (1stw) and some very good views were had with the bird around 20 metres away. After satisfying ourselves with the views we had and the bird had disappeared in to cover we decided to take our leave. We also noticed another SODOFF’er, Justin Taylor there and I think he was the only other Oxfordshire birder to make it on the day.

The drive home was very relaxed with that satisfying feeling of seeing an “ultra-mega” and an absolute beauty of a bird.

The following day, (as we saw in the national press), there were hundreds there but the bird had apparently gone (sorry guys) much to the disappointment of the many there.

A little while later we had a SODOFF meeting and I wore a T-shirt that Lew had done with a Rubythroat on it and I used a marker pen to write a few comments much to the dismay of others people at the meeting who got there on the Monday (sorry Nick). However there has been a couple of “twitchable” rubythroats since so no hard feelings eh!

Twitching Ireland.

Sunday evening 11th July 1999 we were at a birthday party at Brian Wyatt’s in Wallingford enjoying a few beers and the warm weather.

I was involved in a conversation with Geoff Wyatt and Martin Hallam regarding an Elegant Tern at Lady’s Island, county Wexford in Ireland that had been present since the 8th. They were talking about going for it and although I had not seen one before and had not twitched Ireland before I was not that keen on going.

The evening wore on and after a few more beers the thought of a good twitch started to get rather interesting even though we were due at work the following day. Around 21:00 that night a plan was hatched, Geoff had worked out the logistics and it all looked fairly straight forward. There was a ferry to Rosslare from Pembroke in the morning..............however as we had been drinking since early evening and none of us were in any condition to drive. It was suggested that Lew may well want to twitch an Elegant Tern as he was at home and hopefully not drinking, so we decided give him a call.

The phone call went something like this; Geoff: “Hi Lew how do you fancy a trip to Ireland for that Tern”.

Lew; “yeah that sounds interesting, when?” Geoff; “How about tonight, there is a ferry around 03:00 in the morning”.

Lew; “Short notice but sounds OK, when do we leave and who’s driving”. Geoff; “Well we can leave as soon as possible and as we are at a party and all rather drunk we thought you might like to drive!”

A slight delay in Lew’s response but he eventually agreed, so the twitch was on. Lew picked us all up we got all our kit together and off we went for a 200 mile drive to get the ferry at Pembroke docks, I guess we must have left around 22:30 ‘ish as we made the ferry OK.

The 4 hour drive for the ferry and another 4 hour trip on the ferry enabled us to get some sleep and sober up somewhat.

We arrived in Rosslare, Ireland around 07:00 and got a taxi to Lady’s Island where the bird had been frequenting and within 15 minutes were watching an Elegant Tern that was reasonably easy to pick out.

Elegant Terns breed on the Pacific coasts of the Southern USA and Mexico and winters south to Peru, Ecuador and Chile so was regarded as an unusual species to turn up in Western Europe.

As well as the Elegant Tern we noted a few Arctic Terns, several Roseate Tern and many Sandwich Tern also 3 Tree Sparrow.

Job done by around 09:00 but Martin and I should have been in work that morning and we were over 300 miles away across the Irish Sea watching birds!

We looked for the nearest phone box to call in our excuses; I managed to swing a day’s leave at short notice and told work that I was in Ireland at that time and I would not make it in anyway. My work colleagues were well aware of my twitching habits and I had no problem with short notice absences.

The return ferry journey back was one of those fast jobs that only take a couple of hours however we spent those few hours on the upper deck observing plenty of Guillemots with young well out at sea, c10 Puffin, a few Razorbills, 100’s of Manx Shearwater and good numbers of Gannets and Kittiwakes. All in all a successful trip and that has been my one and only twitch to Ireland.

Back in Time – May - June 2003.

2003 five of us undertook a two-week birding trip to Spain; the five consisted of Brian, Roger and Geoff Wyatt, Martin Hallam and myself.

We flew out to Bilbao, hired a car and off we went for a great two week adventure travelling Spain and seeing some great birds but that is a story for another time.

A story within a story here though, as we had managed to identify a guaranteed site for Wallcreeper and confirm another for DuPont’s Lark we phoned home and a few days later a Mr Ian Lewington and a Mr Nic Hallam twitched the Wallcreeper and DuPont’s Lark from the UK. Flying out to Bilbao, hiring a car, seeing the birds, and flying back to the UK the following day! That is a twitch for you!

Anyway, we arrived back in the UK on Saturday 31st May, very happy, sun-tanned and knackered and a day to recover before getting back to work.

However, the pager ensured that did not happen as on the Sunday “mega” Black Lark, South Stack, Anglesey!

No contest you just have to do it!

We actually departed that Sunday night for Anglesey and drove the 250 or so miles up to Anglesey, the weather had been abysmal on Anglesey the day the lark was found and the conversation on the journey was IF the bird would still be present.

We arrived at dawn on Monday 2nd June and joined the assembled throng of between 6-700 birders; the burnt area where the lark had been seen the day before had been roped off and the larks presence was established relatively quickly in the same area.

The bird was easy to pick out even with the naked eye as it stood out well against a background of grasses and small plants and was seen and appreciated by everyone present with the bird ranging down to around 70 metres.

Monday 2nd June was a dull and murky day, with a cool westerly wind. Now bearing in mind we were still in “Spain mode” shorts etc. and forgetting how cold it can be in north Wales even in early June.

After about an hour, I started to shiver so I had to start moving around. I am not sure about the rest of the crew but I am sure we all felt the cold!

The trip was well worth it though, a fantastic bird to see in the UK and well out of range from central Russia.

Not a lot else noted that day apart from the inevitable Red-billed Choughs and several seabird species.

Anglesey has always been a great spot for rarities and on other twitches; and over the years, we have twitched Forster’s, Sooty and Bridled Tern, Killdeer Plover and White-billed Diver.

Back in Time – Pacific Swift 30th May 1993.

I arrived back from Didcot with my daughter as we had just done our monthly shop at Tesco’s on the Sunday morning and just as I pulled up the pager went off with a “mega alert” – Pacific Swift, Cley, Norfolk!

I quickly asked my daughter to empty the car and put things away while I rushed upstairs got my birding kit and made a few phone calls. I was also thinking at the time, a 4 hour trip to Norfolk, Swifts don’t normally hang around so will it still be there however if you don’t go for it you won’t see it anyway so the twitch was on.

This incidentally was the 2nd record for Britain? And as it turned out the 1st twitchable, the 1st found resting on a North Sea gas platform.

I picked up Geoff and Roger Wyatt and off we “raced” to Norfolk. We hit the road and headed east, as we got on to the M25 we immediately run in to traffic, very frustrating! Crawling along when there was a mega around 100 miles away. After a time we came alongside another birder’s car whilst in the traffic jam and as I remember they were not aware of the “Cley Swift” and we then passed on the info. After a while we were clear of traffic and put on our best speed to Cley and constantly checking the pager for the latest info.

On arriving at Cley the coast road by the marsh was absolutely solid with cars parked on every available verge so we drove along and saw a gap next to a gate, now I don’t normally block gates but this was an exception, so bang, we were in and parked!

The others raced from the car and crossed the road while I shut the doors and locked the car.

Mark Golley as I recall was at one of the entrances collecting an entrance fee for the twitch and Geoff paid for all of us, so over the bridge and out on the path by the marsh, fortunately the Pacific Swift was still present with a flock of Common Swifts feeding over the marsh.

I suppose, fortunately it was a cloudy day with low cloud over the whole area and the swifts stayed in the vicinity feeding.

We stood there scanning the flock and occasionally picking out the swift with the white rump but not really getting prolonged views, people were arriving all the time and quite a few still had not seen it, then Geoff locked on to it and called “it's over the brown cow”. That was it I managed then to lock on and so did many others, good call!

We then watched it for around another ten minutes and then a small sun lit gap appeared in the clouds and within a couple of minutes virtually all the swifts had gone including the PS.

Whilst we were all celebrating birders were still arriving but alas the bird was never seen again. As usual after a successful twitch the journey back was less fraught and far more relaxed than the outward journey.

Back in time - SODOFF

S.O.D.O.F.F. was conceived in 1991 in a pub in Wallingford by a few birders who wanted a bit more oomph from a meeting about birds and birding.

SODOOF stands for “South Oxfordshire Ornithological Fellowship of Friends” sounds like something from “Lord of the Rings” but believe me not all of us are Hobbits or Elves come to that!

We decided to hold regular meetings around 3 per year and issue a “journal” for each meeting, the meetings were held in Cholsey at the old pavilion until it got burned down (It wasn’t us) and the last meeting was held in the Old School Day Centre here at Marymead.

The core team initially for SODOFF was Ian Lewington, Peter Pool, Carl Salmon, Steve Young and myself. We also recruited many others with special skills or no skills whatsoever to help out and/or write various articles, these included Roger and Geoff Wyatt, Martin Hallam, George Reszeter and many other well-known Oxfordshire birders.

The “Teletree” was developed alongside; this was a telephone-based system for disseminating information on rare or scarce county birds. Initially around 10 members but this grew over the next few years to 30+ members and started to get rather complex for getting information to all concerned.

With the hibernation of SODOFF (we aint gone away yet!) the Teletree became OBIS (great for acronyms aren’t we) and continued on well in to the 2000’s but as communication media progressed this fell in to disuse but it done the job for those years it was active and a lot of county birders saw some good stuff because of it.

The OOS (Oxford Ornithological Society) perceived us as a potential threat and we even had a meeting with the OOS president, Dr Andy Gosler in a pub in Wallingford one evening and were successful in allaying any fears of a fledgling bird club usurping the authority of the oldest bird society in the world.

The first meeting was held on 12th August 1992, the journal was entitled “Not the birds of Oxfordshire” and was mainly about the Teletree, at this point George Reszeter was onboard as a photographic consultant and Geoff Wyatt for catering and Roger Wyatt joined the board with a special responsibility for hall bookings. Andy Swash gave a talk that evening on the birds of Venezuela.

“Roger’s noises” (Roger Wyatt), “Martins ID quiz” (Martin Hallam) and “the mystery bird quiz” (Lew) were born and provided many an entertaining time trying to guess what bird made this or that noise especially after several cans of Caffreys.

I’m sure Bill Campbell would have frowned on us and then offered us a wee drop of whisky from his hip flask!

Over the next few years we had talks from the esteemed Mr Lev Levington himself, Jon King, Dave Cotteridge, Tim Loseby, Dave Massey, Andy Swash (again), Mike Amphlett and many other notable “ornithologists” “photographers” and “ecologists”.

The journal took on many guises with names like “SODBB”, “SOD the new year”, “Bastard Wing”, “Turdus”, “SOD’ING World”, “Scilly Sod” to name but a few and featured many class articles such as “Chumming for Black Grouse”, (remember that Rog!), “5 go North”, “Society wedding of the year”, and the now infamous “Skinny dipping on Scilly” photographed by George Reszeter and organised by Debbie Lewington, still have to get you back for that Debs, and the very prestigious “Serious back Page” with all the graphics dominated by our prestigious local bird artist Mr Levington.

The editorial meetings usually took place in the George and Dragon in Sutton Courtney where many useless ideas were formulated and included in the journals and at the meetings.

We even had T-shirts, car stickers etc printed, and even designed a pair of logo’d unisex undergarments. The T-shirts and car stickers were seen throughout the land from Scilly to Wick on various twitches, and the name of SODOFF became internationally known with several sodoff’ers flouting their T-shirts on international birding trips.

SODOFF eventually went in to hibernation in the late 90’s due to financial considerations waiting for the day it will re-awaken and take the birding world by storm once again.

Paul Chandler a.k.a. oxonbirder, I accept no responsibility for the accuracy of the above article as I cannot remember it all (too pissed then and too old now)!

Back in Time – Northern Waterthrush Saga and more!

The first Waterthrush twitch I went on was 31st August 1989. One had arrived on St Agnes, Isles of Scilly 2 days before. Geoff Wyatt and I decided to go for it so we managed to get a day off from work and drove to Penzance to catch the Scillonian to the islands. Once we arrived we then took a boat from St Marys to St Agnes only to find the bird had gone!

It was a lovely sunny day and as there was not much else around we just sat around on the beach and eventually fell asleep for a few hours. On waking we began to realise we had gotten sunburnt and had sunburnt eyelids also, a little painful. We then caught the inter island boat back to St Marys, back on to the Scillonian and sailed back to Penzance, then the long drive back home to Oxfordshire. By the time we got back we were back to high spirits again and the disappointment of an expensive dip was a thing of the past.

October 1996 saw the Oxfordshire team on the Isles of Scilly as usual; it was a good Scilly with a Black & White Warbler the star of the show that year and as we got into the second week rarities started turning up on the mainland including a Northern Waterthrush on Portland. Normally we regarded it as a sin to leave Scilly mid holiday but there was more than a Waterthrush on the mainland so Geoff and I decided to fly off a give it a go.

We landed at Lands End airport and immediately set off for Portland along with another crew from Manchester who was also tempted off and we were hoping we could make it there before dark. We hit the A30 and settled down for a long drive to Dorset, around halfway along the A30 we suddenly noticed a fox hound running towards us on the outside lane of the dual carriageway, definitely a dangerous situation! Immediately we phoned this in to the police on my mobile and 10 mins later a couple of police cars were seen speeding to the location we gave them so hopefully all ended well as we never knew the outcome.

We made good time to Portland but unfortunately it was dark by the time we arrived and the Obs at Portland was full, but the good news was that the bird was seen to “presumably” go to roost.

We managed to get in to a B&B down by the coastguard cottages so we were in with a good chance the following day. That night we sat and watched several Foxes from the B&B patio window feeding on the left overs from that evenings dinner and turned in later that night feeling ever hopeful of seeing the bird the next day.

Dawn the following morning we made straight for the Obs and saw the bird almost immediately in the Obs garden and then subsequently in some of the gardens in the coastguard cottages and even from the B&B where we stayed. Finally a Waterthrush in the bag along with a Subalpine Warbler and a few Firecrest that were also present so well worth the trip.

As there was another species in the country that we needed we decided to go for this also. So a brief trip back to Oxfordshire for a few hours sleep and then set off early the next morning for the Great Knot that was up at Seaton Snook near Hartlepool which we also got. 2 days later with both Oxfordshire crews in action we went for an Indigo Bunting on Rhamsey Island, South Wales, then again 2 days later I was off to (just me) Broadstairs in Kent for a King Eider and 3 days after that (with Lew & Martin) a Little Bustard on the Lizard in Cornwall. What an autumn and what a year with a Cedar Waxwing in Nottingham in February, a Redhead in Nottinghamshire in March, American Coot in Stodmarsh in April, a Spanish Sparrow in Cumbria in July and a Blyth’s Reed Warbler in Norfolk in September.

Back in Time (1968)

In November 1968 HMS Naiad (my home for 4 years) left Rio de Janeiro and travelled to Simonstown, South Africa.

We had just left Brazil after escorting the Royal Yatch with the Queen and Prince Philip aboard on a state visit to Recife, Salvador and Rio in Brazil.

We had previously left Portsmouth and visited Gibraltar, Madeira, Cape Verde, and The Salvage islands and shortly after we met up with HMS Danae and the Royal Yatch.

This was part of an almost yearlong deployment in which we carried out several patrols and visits in the Gulf, Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

This particular journey relates to our transit in the southern Ocean where we stopped off at Tristan da Cunha en route to South Africa. Tristan is a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic. We stopped off there to deliver essential supplies and mail and help with some repairs that they had suffered from a recent storm.

My favourite duty when on watch at sea was lookout, where I was positioned on the bridge with a pair of binoculars scanning for ships, aircraft etc. but personally for birds and any other life that was present on the ocean.

The sea life in that area of the ocean was rich in variety and unfortunately we could not identify a lot as the only reference we had was “A guide to Seabirds of the Ocean routes” by Gerald Tuck which I acquired from the ships library. There was also a couple of crew members with the same interest and we were members of the “Royal Navy Birdwatching Society”.

However we did manage to identify some species and some down to family or genus.

As we left Rio I looked back at the “Christ the Redeemer” statue that stand proud on Corcovado Mountain but what grabbed my attention was a small flock of Magnificent Frigatebird wheeling over the harbour.

As we proceeded east we started seeing a number of seabirds with a lot of species unidentified. We also saw a few Penguin that were identified as Magellanic Penguin. Also identified were Cape Petrel, White-faced Petrel, Wilson’s Petrel, Sooty Tern, Brown, Masked and Red-footed Booby, Great and Lesser Frigatebird and both Red-billed and White-tailed Tropicbird and several Gull and Tern species.

We refuelled and took on provisions at sea with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary “Wave Chief” and then steamed on for Tristan.

The first Albatross seen was approx. halfway to Tristan and was a Wandering Albatross. This bird followed us for a few days and was seen regularly hanging in the air off the stern of the ship using the drag of the ship to propel it along.

A few more Albatross species were seen with a few coming close enough to be identified. These were Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross and Grey-headed Albatross.

As we neared Tristan seabird numbers increased, we anchored off the island and used the on-board helicopter and sea boats to get some of the crew ashore to assist the islanders.

As we were stood down from sea duties we had more leisure time to observe the sea life which include Tristan Albatross, Northern Rockhopper Penguin, Great Shearwater and Sooty Shearwater at close quarters.

One bird that we all wanted to see that was not a seabird was the Tristan Thrush, an endemic to the island and found nowhere else in the world and during a brief visit ashore we managed to find 2 individuals.

Other species seen during our 6 day stay were: Brown Noddy, Northern Giant Petrel, Common Diving Petrel, Black-browed Albatross, Brown Skua/Sub-Antarctic Skua, Southern Fulmar, several other Petrel species and more Shearwater species.

We left Tristan heading for South Africa and picked up another follower. Another Wandering Albatross that again followed for several days.

More Albatross were noted and 2 new species seen. Light-mantled Albatross and Sooty Albatross. These are more southerly species and some of my favourites.

As we neared the African coast again seabird species increased with several Tern and Gull species, African Penguin, Cape Petrel, Cape Gannet and more Petrel and Albatross species.

As well as the birds we saw many mammals and fish. My first Blue Whale, several Dolphin and larger Whale species, 2 Elephant Seal species, Sub-Antarctic Fur Seal, Cape Fur Seal, Sharks, Marlin, Barracuda, Swordfish, Flying Fish, Manta Rays and the list goes on.

Some of my notes from back then have either disintegrated or got lost but I managed to get some information from some old documents and a few contacts from back then. The wildlife journey did not end there as we continued our deployment along the East African coast to the Gulf, to India, the Far East and Japan. That’s a story for another day.

No wildlife photos from back then unfortunately only Navy stuff.