Grune’s ‘Purple Patch’

Those who visit Grune Point in the county’s extreme north-west seem often to come away feeling that the area ought to produce ‘good birds’.

From the tip, the watcher has excellent viewing out onto the outer Solway Firth to the west and north-west for ‘sea-birds’; across vast mud-flats to the north and north-east for feeding waders, ducks, and gulls; eastwards to beds of Salicornia glasswort (called ‘samphire’ locally), and a huge salt-marsh to the south-east, at the tip of which large flocks of waders collect at high tide. The walk out takes you past sheltered creeks, hedges, woodland, fields, and areas of gorse. (Local farmers seem determined to claim this for agriculture, however, much to the disgust of at least some of the locals, and the area under gorse is now much reduced from former times.)

Given all this variety of habitat, and its position jutting out into the mud-flats, acting as a magnet for migrating land-birds, many watchers feel that Grune produces good birds in proportion to the amount of time it is worked. Certainly in decades past, when regular ringing expeditions were run by the late Bob Spencer and others, large numbers of migrant land-birds were often found there, with the expected sprinkling of rarer migrants and vagrants. Amongst those were at least five Barred Warblers, Yellow-browed Warbler, Golden Oriole, and Red-backed Shrike.

Although the Point is visited quite regularly by some locals, and intermittently by visitors from further away, records of rarities have become fewer. A Shore Lark in two recent winters proved a major ‘draw’ - hardly a rarity in UK terms, but of great interest in the county.

The summer of 2000, however, saw two first-class rarities in the space of two weeks: an adult summer-plumaged Pacific Golden Plover, 5th-9th August, and a Black-winged Pratincole, 17th August-3rd September. Both were second records for the county, and the first of these brought pleasure and relief in equal measure.

Cumbria’s first Pacific Golden Plover was seen on the Solway shore between Bowness and Campfield by Derek and Marjorie West on 19th September 1998. Most unfortunately for the county’s ‘listers’, the bird departed almost at once, but not before DW had obtained enough photographic evidence to allow the record to be confirmed. (DW’s home-made telescope-to-camera adapter has done sterling service over the years...).

Thus when Malcolm Sargent’s excellent find of 5th August actually deigned to stay around, and gave superlative views to very many observers, the relief was tangible, not only from the county’s keenest, but also perhaps from DW - whose reign as Cumbria’s sole ‘Lesser Golden Plover’ finder was finally ended. (His other finds of ‘Lessers’ were American Golden Plovers at Bowness, 2nd October 1997, and Anthorn, 7th to 9th October 1999.)

MS was walking to the Point along the saltmarsh side of the Grune, and quite casually happened to look over a gorse hedge onto one of the fields, to see two Golden Plovers, one still in breeding plumage drawing his attention. Almost as once he realised that "that’s not one of ours!". It was clearly a smaller and slighter bird than the accompanying European, with long slender legs, deeper tones to its back, much black below, and with a striking white band from the forehead round the face, curving down the neck-sides, and ‘ballooning’ into a wider patch on the upper flanks. Over the following days, this bird spent most of its time with a few European Golden Plovers feeding on a pasture cropped to bowling-green shortness by a horde of sheep, and permitted close scrutiny. Adult ‘Lesser’ Golden Plovers (i.e. American and Pacific Golden Plovers, until recently classed as two subspecies of a single species) share a number of distinguishing marks which allow separation from our own ‘Goldie’. Amongst these is the fact that adult ‘Lessers’ seem to retain breeding plumage somewhat longer than do Europeans, and thus in August may still be seen in ‘good plumage’, at a time when most adult Europeans’ breeding plumage has become largely blotchy. Thus the birds stand out very well in a mixed crowd. (The 1999 Anthorn American Golden Plover mentioned above also exhibited this feature, even in October.) The calls of ‘Lessers’ also differ distinctly from Europeans, being distinctly disyllabic and abrupt, and reminiscent of Spotted Redshank, at least at a distance. This bird however refused to call for long periods. The other sure distinguishing feature of all ‘Lessers’ is the smoky-brown feathers of the entire underwing and axillaries (the ‘arm-pit’ feathers); in Europeans, this area is white - a difference which in some circumstances can be very clear, such as when the birds alight, and briefly hold their wings vertically upwards. In flight against the sky, however, this is rarely a useful character, unless the sunlight is coming from a low angle.

This bird performed perfectly, rarely leaving its favourite field, usually remaining with the other Goldies - as if to invite comparisons - and moving around as it fed, sometimes coming within less than 40 metres of the field-hedges, and thankful observers. It was spectacularly black below, and spangled black, gold and white above. The striking broad white stripe from forehead to flanks was very obvious at longer range.

At the closest range, all the distinguishing marks could be seen, not just to separate it from European GP, but also certainly from American. The flank feathers showed bold black-and-white bars (all black in American); the undertail area was black, but had corresponding white markings on each side (typically all black in American); and most tellingly, the tertial feathers were very long, and covered almost all of the primaries in the folded wing (in American, the tertials being shorter, a wedge of primaries is visible in the folded wing).

Hardly a week after the Golden Plover was last seen, on 17th August, the telephone lines were buzzing again, this time with the news that DW had found a Pratincole - soon identified as a Black-winged. Cumbria’s only previous Black-winged Pratincole was the bird of 25th to 28th August 1996, which spent its time moving between the Leighton Moss salt-marshes in Lancashire, and the Cumbrian Kent estuary. Whilst many birders had caught up with it at the Lancashire end of its wanderings, fewer had seen it actually within Cumbria (and these things matter to some folk).

In the afternoon of that day Derek was checking through a Lapwing flock over 300 metres away in the samphire across the tidal creek at the end of Skinburness Marsh. He was astonished to see a Pratincole ‘drop’ right through the ’scope’s field of view, only to disappear in the samphire! A very brief view of the bird landing but later nicely confirmed for both Derek and Marjorie when it took off and flew over the saltmarsh opposite. Some 200 metres away it performed beautifully, climbing steeply, twisting, turning and swooping down - hawking insects like a huge swallow.

Definitely a Pratincole but which one? It certainly looked very long-winged and the underwing and axillaries were apparently black. Derek reports he ‘had no ‘non-video’ experience of Black-winged, only Collared in the Mediterranean area. Having read all the warnings about how black Collared could look on the underwing and that Black-winged should be rather evenly dark above there was an apparent anomaly here? The bird did not look evenly dark above, but the light (the sun was to our rear right) was extremely strong. The outer-wing and the secondaries were blackish but the coverts on the inner wing, scapulars and back/mantle/nape varied from mid-brown to cinnamon on the neck nape and head. We watched the bird showing off its hawking prowess for about an hour. I still couldn’t see any colour but ‘midnight-black’ on the underwing, yet the upper surface continued to show the contrast as noted. No white trailing edge to the secondaries was apparent - which was right for Black-winged. As usual for Cumbria no birders were about so we decided to try to get some local watchers down to see it. Not believing in the ‘new technology’ we had to walk back to Silloth to phone round!’

Back at Grune Point the Lapwings and Pratincole were by now more than 500 metres away in the samphire. By the time other observers had gathered, cloud had reduced the intensity of the light and the Pratincole had been ‘buried’ in the samphire for some time - it was still over 600 metres away with Lapwing. Eventually the flock got up and the Pratincole was seen against a sky background at long distance - a specific identification would require much better views. Then the Lapwing flock was disturbed and flew south, taking the Pratincole with them. Fortuitously, the birds landed on the old Silloth airfield nearly two miles away. The Pratincole was relocated with Lapwing on the ground and later seen in flight. At last seen well at less than 200 metres, our bird was seen to be an adult. The primaries projected well past the end of the tail-tips at rest; the lores were fairly broadly darkish with very little red on the gape. In flight the underwing and axillaries were black. Upperparts and coverts did not contrast so much with the outer-wing in the changed light, and no white trailing edge to secondaries was visible.

Seen by a number of Cumbrian birders on this occasion there were no dissenting voices from the conclusion that it was a Black-winged as seen now from a full suite of characters.

This second Black-winged Pratincole, like the first, ranged widely, and had the annoying habit of roosting hidden within the Salicornia beds, or out on the salt-marsh, for long periods. Thus the bird soon gained the dreaded reputation of being ‘elusive’. Many observers had to return several times to Grune to get satisfactory - or indeed any - views. Towards the end of its stay, it would settle over the low-tide period far out on rocky ‘scaurs’ covered in green alga, and either rest there, feed intermittently on the ground, or at times would fly up, apparently to catch flying insect prey (although this was difficult to confirm at the great distance), before circling back to perch again, sometimes after lengthy flights over the flats.

Pratincoles are curious aberrant waders, with extremely buoyant and powerful flight, reminiscent to many observers of terns - and sharing with them long pointed wings and forked tails. They are very characteristic of the open margins of saline or brackish lagoons and lakes in warm climates, feeding largely by aerial pursuit of insects. Collared Pratincole is the species familiar in southern Europe, and it visits the UK considerably more frequently, mostly in spring, than the autumn-visiting Black-winged.

Separating these two species (and indeed the still rarer Oriental Pratincole) can be tricky. The ‘black wings’ refer of course to the underwing coverts, which are dull red in both Collared and Oriental - but in many views this can be difficult to discern. The inner half of the upperwing of BWP is darker, and so less contrasted with the dark outer half, than in Collared, while Collared is the only one of the three with a white trailing edge to the inner wing.

There was some speculation that the Grune bird might have been the same individual as other sightings of this species in the north-west in recent years (a view especially favoured by observers who managed to catch up with the Leighton Moss or Martin Mere bird/s, but not the Grune bird!).

Grune Point is now firmly ‘back on the map’ as far as Cumbria’s birders are concerned, and let’s hope that this renewed interest translates into other good finds in the future.