Red-Flanked Bluetail
The Colins Bird guide lists the charismatic Red-flanked Blue Tail as a two star rarity which equates to one or UK sightings in a normal year. Historically it was a rare summer visitor in North-eastern Europe but this year has seen record numbers in Finland, giving us hope that we might get a few more vagrants than usual this autumn on route to their south-eastern Asian wintering grounds. With the much sort after, at least by birders, combination of easterly winds and short sharp showers last week we were certainly not disappointed with, incredibly, somewhere in the region of forty birds found on the English east coast.
The Red-flanked Bluetail was high up on the list of UK birds I wanted to see and I needed no further encouragement whatsoever to get up at silly o’ clock last Wednesday and head for the east coast. The question was what destination to choose from the three obvious options, Yorkshire, Norfolk or Kent? In the end I opted for Kent as there had been good photos of a Bluetail at Dungeness the previous day and a Short-toed Tree Creeper, a bird absent from my UK list had also been spotted close by.
I became increasingly worried by the lack of reports of either bird as I drove down and sure enough as I approached the coast the news that no birder wants to see appeared on my bird alert service…. “no sign of …” Somewhat insanely on the spur of the moment I decided to divert to Norfolk where there were good reports coming through of a number of showy Bluetails, basically I had wasted the first 3 hours of the day!
I headed for a small coastally village called Waxham somewhat further south than my normal birding spots in Norfolk. My logic was that it was likely to be less busy than the birding hotspots further up the Norfolk coast. I had the exact map reference for the birds location on my OS locate phone app and parked at around 13:00 as close as I could get by a muddy track down to the coastal path. There were a small number of other cars there which I presumed were other birders. On the 30 minute or so walk to the site I passed a number of other birders heading back who confirmed that I was heading in the right direction and that the bird was showing well. Hearing the later, at least in my experience, can be a mixed blessing as its all the more disappointing to arrive on site when the bird is no longer showing! On this occasion my fears were ill founded as the bird was showing well on arrival to the 6 or so birders present. It was perching up on a fence line than dropping down to grab an insect from the sodden grass in a very Wheatear like manner. It would show well for a several minutes and then disappear into the hedge before putting in another appearance around 20- 30 minutes later. I rattled off lots of pictures of the bird on the fence but was hoping for perhaps a more natural shot with it on the hedge branches. Luckily it eventual obliged and perched up in full view in the hedge long enough to get the pictures of it I was hoping for.
It was now close on 17:00 and the combination of the easterly wind and horizontal rain was chilling me to the bone. Still I can’t complain as this is exactly the weather that dropped the bird on our shore in the first place! I was certainly grateful of the full waterproofs I had put on when I left the car and arrived back at my parking spot with the light rapidly fading. I was pretty knackered from two long drives and the thought of driving home that night combined with the knowledge that there was much birding still to be done on the Norfolk coast made me decide to book into a local Premier Inn for the night.
Fortified with a nice glass of red wine and some steaming hot lasagne from the next door restaurant I made a plan to take breakfast when the restaurant opened at 06:30 and then make the short drive back to Waxham Church where a very showy male black Redstart and a Pallas’s leaf warbler had been reported. After a good old fashioned full English breakfast I drove to the church, parked up and had a quick unsuccessful look for the Black Redstart before heading down the lane to the location of the Pallas’s Warbler.
The Pallas’s leaf warbler is tiny by warbler standards but none the less a very attractive bird somewhat resembling its commoner autumn vagrant cousin, the Yellow-browed Warbler but with a long bright yellow supercilium, a bold yellow crown strip and a yellow rump. It’s a very active and quickly moving bird, often changing perch then fluttering or hovering in the hedge or tree canopy. The issue I was going to have finding the bird was immediately obvious as I walked down the lane, there had been a fall of Goldcrests along the coast driven by the same weather conditions as the other vagrants and they were literally everywhere in uncountable numbers. One bare tree alone looked as though someone had decorated it with Goldcrests for Christmas with birds literally on every available spot. Given a reasonable view, the Goldcrest is comparatively easy to tell apart from the Pallas’s but with this number of birds displaying the same restless habit as the Pallas’s it was going to take some finding. My other issue was that this was an occasion when more than one pair of eyes were desperately needed but I was alone. I felt that I heard the Pallas’s call a couple of times but in the end decided to try my luck further up the coast at Stiffkey where there were at least 3 Pallas’s Warblers in the hedgerows by the campsite and also hopefully there would be a few other birder looking.
On the way back to the car I looked in the church grave yard again and immediately saw the very smart looking Black Redstart being chased around the tomb stones by a Robin. I sat on a small bench in the graveyard and waited with my camera set up low down. Over the next hour or so I was rewarded with ridiculously close views of the bird as it hopped around the tombstones literally a few feet from where I was sitting.
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| Black Redstart |
Having again rattled off lots of shots I made my way an hour or so up the coast to Stiffkey campsite and walked along the boundary hedge to where the Pallas’s Warblers were located. I was relieved to see 10 or so other birders present and over the next 2 hours was rewarded with a few typically transient views of the leaf warbler as it moved restlessly around the canopy in the company of a flock of yet more Goldcrests.
I then made my way up the coast to Holkham where another Red-Flanked Blue tail had been seen but there were no further sightings in the hour or so I was there and It was now time to make my way home for a Friday night appointment with one of Carolyn’s delicious homemade curries.
As a footnote the first UK Rufous Bush Chat for 40 years was found at Stiffkey the next morning – I was one day too earlier- oh well you can’t win them all!!
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