Summer Holiday Birds (Part Three) - 'In Search of the Bearded Tit'

Bearded tit on the cover of the RSPB summer magazine.

Summer seems a long time ago now, but due to the sluggish nature of my blogtivity, there's still one more of summer's bird adventures to be recorded.

There's an RSPB reserve in Weymouth just outside the town, sandwiched between two A-roads, and we thought maybe it wouldn't be very idyllic or pleasant or bird-friendly, but we decided to give it a go on the last day of our holiday. When we got there it turned out it was pretty idyllic actually. It mainly consisted of wooden walkways through towering reed beds and though there were roads roaring around us and a Carpet Land just beyond, it still felt like a separate contained bird habitat.

In the visitor centre there was a list of recent sightings and a few things appealed; a visiting marsh harrier and the resident bearded tits in particular. 

Rose and I first went to Dorset a few years ago for a Christmas break and to celebrate being together one year, and that was when our interest in birds was awakened. I noticed blue tits for the first time in the snow and in the Dorchester museum there had been an exhibit about local wildlife, the bearded tit one of the most distinctive.

OK, I said, as we entered the reserve, I'm not leaving until I've seen a bearded tit. I decided that if they are here all year round and they had been seen as recently as yesterday, then surely I'd be able to see one if I only had enough patience. 

It's not really a tit, the bearded tit. It looks like a rare bird, an exotic bird, fat and rounded, the beard in question more like Fu Manchu moustaches.

On our trip round, we met a few other birdwatchers. Now we are more experienced, we tend to talk to the other birdwatchers more. We can speak more of their language and are less embarrassed by any lack of knowledge. No one had seen any bearded tits that day. The common consensus was that Weymouth's other reserve was better. One man played us the call of a bearded tit on a little speaker which he sometimes used to attract birds. This kind of technology is frowned upon by the staff here, so he was surreptitious. The call was indistinctive, just a high-pitched single note 'ping'. I told him I wasn't leaving until I saw one. He said that was a bold statement. 

We made our way round the circuit through the reeds, blocked at one point by an aggressive male swan who had built his nest in the middle of the path. We thought it best to go back round the other way rather than find out how strong swans can really be, whether they really can break your arm. 

And we didn't see any bearded tits. It's possible we heard them but though I stood and stared patiently, imploring into the reeds where they had been spotted, all I saw was a heron poking his head up and it became apparent that my vow not to leave until I had seen one would be exposed as foolhardy. Neither did we see the marsh harrier (it came and went just before we got to the hide apparently) or the hooded merganser, but we saw a tern, maybe a reed warbler, sandpipers, and had a pleasant if sweaty summer dawdle through the reeds.

Later as if to soothe the sting of our defeats we were flocked by friendly little birds in a park. We had some flapjack and fed it to sparrows who came right up to us; one even took a piece from my very fingers. A blackbird and a female chaffinch also joined in, though the greenfinches stayed in the trees, disapproving.

Epilogue

Going back through my recordings from that day I think I have identified the call of a bearded tit. We were so close. Hidden in those reed beds just in front of us, just out of sight, was the bird we were seeking. If the vicissitudes of nature had favoured us just a fraction more, the bird we were seeking might have chosen that moment to stretch its wings and show itself.