See it, say it, win it

Well this is almost unprecedented. Not since 2017 have I managed 50 blog posts by the end of March. And yet here we are. Antipathy is somewhat to blame, a lack of write-ups in 2024 contributing to a surfeit in 2025, yet this diminishes the scale of the effort. At a time when blogging is essentially dead I have managed to defy the odds by a huge margin. An alternative view would be that I am just not getting the message. I know, I know. I was talking to a fellow patchworker the other day about my camera, knowing I had made the big switch he had asked how it was going. OK, I said, had he seen any of the stuff I'd posted from Morocco, my first proper trip with it? Er, no. I don't blame him at all, it is just the way things are. I could write a blog about it....

Meanwhile I am behind on trips again. When you travel as relentlessly as I appear to do this is bound to happen. Texel is as long ago as February, I've since spent a weekend in the Algarve and a day on Jersey, a long held ambition. Both were excellent and will appear here soon, however there is something much more important to convey. There is Wheatear news. Yes, it has happened. As my regular reader will know my first day of March 12th passed without troubling the scorers. The day I would have chosen, March 15th, was also a blank. I was not upset about this. The rest of that week was also Wheatearless and to make matters worse we were pipped to the post by Walthamstow of all places. Gah! 

Saturday dawned overcast and with some scattered showers. The first bird found was a Stonechat, new in. Things were looking good. This was Tony's day, and having found the first Wheatear on his chosen day in 2024 he was on for the double double. A year ago he had been stood next to Louis when a Wheatear had popped up. Tony beat Louis to the exclamation by a millisecond. Ever since then Louis has been in an intensive training regime managed by Gosia. Wheatear cut-outs have been placed around the house, stapled onto sticks, pasted onto windows, and for nearly 12 months Louis has been coached to within an inch of his life in not only how to spot a Wheatear but how to enunciate the word "Wheatear" with almost no latency. Would this be enough? Tony is pretty sharp, and after a week at work he is itching to get out there, straining every sense in the pursuit of that one singular goal. The double double. Louis for his part has been out every day, practising on Redwing, Dunnock, Skylark and Song Thrush. By the time Saturday came around he'd done something like 30 hours that week. See it, say it, win it. This is the mantra. There were no Wheatears to practice on, but you should hear him on Cormorants. 

Shortly after James found the Stonechat Bob upped the stakes by finding a Black Redstart at the southern end of the Brooms. Tony, James and I were ideally placed having been at Angel looking for Snipe. Black Redstart is is a patch mega, the first and only record being in 2013, in other words a patch tick for almost everyone, and we hurried over there so that James could qualify for buying us all breakfast (you get a patch tick, you buy the coffees). Louis was at the wrong end of the Brooms and thus missed out on an ideal warm-up but managed to get over there with Gosia, Eve and Tim to see it before it vanished. Good, very good even, but nonetheless not a Wheatear.

Black Redstart with handsome but blurred birder in the background. © James Heal

You cannot have both Stonechat and Black Redstart on the patch and not have a Wheatear was the general feeling. Once we had all reassembled at the northern end of the Brooms we were on high alert. James toddled off to get the coffees in and this of course proved the ideal moment for a Wheatear to pop up on a tree. For my part I had just at this moment decided to go and see if James was on his way back and needed assistance, and Tony, well where was Tony? Nowhere is where. Louis smoothly spotted and called the Wheatear in an almost nonchalant fashion leaving Tony and the rest of us in the dust. We all got on it after the second call before it dropped off to the left and out of view but of course it was game over by then. Tony retains the overall trophy, but the finders award goes to Louis. Well, to Louis's trainer if we are being honest. Gosia has had but one goal in mind since Louis's abject failure to say a crucial word on March 16th last year, and she has pursued it singularly. Dave Brailsford and the science of marginal gains has nothing on Gosia. Louis is exhausted, relief rather than elation but, like an Olympic campaign it has all been worthwhile. The presentation will be in a couple of weeks, this reporter plans to be present.