You win some...

... You lose some. A few weeks back I was all set for a deja-vu themed post about a pratincole at Hexham Swamp. Amazingly another one turned up in the same spot as the Australian Pratincole that was successfully ticked at the back end of last year. This time it was the even more unusual Oriental Pratincole hanging around in exactly the same small patch of samphire and so once again I headed north. Unfortunately it started to rain heavily the day before I got there and, by the time I managed to reach the swamp, the area favoured by the bird was under water. It had been seen the morning before just as the rain arrived but has not been sighted since. Close.

Eastlake Golf Course

Since then the rain has continued almost non-stop filling the sea with effluent and making any outdoor activity impossible. Saying that, I have had some success on the birding front in that time. An Oriental Cuckoo #484 appeared on the Eastlake Golf  Course. With the next big storm imminent I wasn't going to make that mistake twice and so I got out of the office early and headed straight to the golf course. A summer migrant to the far north of Australia from northern Eurasia, it's apparently a pretty secretive bird and difficult to see even up there where it belongs. One of my fellow twitchers had dipped twice when specifically looking for it up north. But here it was, sitting on the 4th tee marker and not too bothered about anything.

Oriental Cuckoo

The rain finally stopped today and so we got out of the house at last and popped down to the coast for a little stroll. The whales aren't due for another couple of months but I did get a good close view of a Peregrine Falcon cruising along the cliff-tops. Let's hope that this is the end of the miserable weather and the start of a pleasant autumn. 

Australian Raven