For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to find my own Wryneck and recently I did on a visit to Cornwall!  Sadly, my camera continues to play-up and this was really the only shot I managed, the others all too blurry to share.

We were staying just outside St Agnes on the north Cornish coast and just a short walk from St Agnes Beacon - a small tor that, once climbed, gave far-reaching all round views of the area.  The surrounding farmland, hedgerows and scrub all made for excellent Wryneck habitat and it was the perfect time of year for one to pop up.

The Beacon also looked like a good vismig spot so I scheduled an early morning visit on 6th Sep to see what might be there and watch the sun rise.  At the top, I was rewarded with breath-taking views as the mist hung in the valleys and the sun began to rise.  Quite a few Meadow Pipts were mobile around the beacon and one of my target birds then called overhead - a Tree Pipit!  It settled further down the Beacon so I made a mental note to look out for it later.

As I walked the path along the Beacon ridge a lark flew up and landed just a few metres away - a Woodlark!  It didn't stay long enough for a photo but flew off across the nearby field and out of sight.  I continued on a loop down to St Agnes Head to check out the headland scrub and the back up to the Beacon.  I didn't add much on my loop save the local pair of Choughs and a Whinchat with the many Stonechats.  A Ringed Plover and Dunlin flew over - typical passage birds at this time of year.

As I walked along the lower path round the Beacon a small bird flew up and across the gorse.  I put my bins to my eyes and bingo!  There sat a Wryneck and the very first one I had found myself.  I was amazed at how small it looked in flight - just like a large warbler really.  They are peculiar, cryptic birds with their unique camouflage and habit of twisting their neck like a serpent.  They also - at least to me - possess a 'larger than life' quality as when observed in binoculars or in a scope they seem a fairly significant bird and yet the moment they fly or start flitting around the resemble a bird not much bigger than a House Sparrow.

The Wryneck remained in the area and eventually disappeared into a small holly bush not to be seen again.  However, the Tree Pipit did reappear in the same bush!  My next target must surely be a new camera!!

One of the great joys and frustrations of birding is that every year is different! Come August, I am out looking for autumn migrants - flycatchers, warblers, redstarts and chats - walking the fields, scanning the hedgerows and checking the local gravel pits for waders too.  I check dates from previous years when I discovered birds and the frustration grows if those dates pass and still no birds!

This August has proved fairly quiet so far with a trickle of expected waders - Greenshank, Ringed Plover and Dunlin - and, while foraging tit flocks have grown, nothing out of the ordinary has revealed itself.  I have had to content myself instead with the usual fayre of Willow Warblers, Chiffchaffs, Lesser and Common Whitethroats, Blackcaps and Garden Warblers.  Of course, watching these flocks is enjoyable and I recently watched group of perhaps a hundred birds pushed this way and that through the trees by a stealthy Sparrowhawk.

While not rare at all by most people's standards, this little bird, at least for me, constituted the first 'proper' autumn discovery and my first for the year anywhere in the UK.  I'm sure there'll be plenty more this autumn but for the moment my 'birding battery' was recharged!

Thankfully I didn't have to wait long for the next boost as the headline photo suggests.  A call yesterday from a local friend alerted me to his discovery of a Pied Flycatcher along the River Ver near his house.  This is a truly good migrant bird to catch up with and one that I don't always see every year so without hesitation I was there, bins in hand, camera at the ready!

Thankfully the bird gave great and prolonged views as it sallied for insects and grubs low down in the scrub by the river.  Many of my previous encounters with these birds have been all too brief as they are masters of disappearing and, when active, can flit fast and furiously within the canopy, denying good views.  This one, however, gave some of the best view I've had to date and took my "Five Miles From Home" year list to 141.