Green with envy (If driving 800 miles for 30 seconds viewing of a rare bird is not enough to get you committed I don't know what is!)

Surely there must be a cure for this madness!

 

For an explanation read on dear intrepid reader read on!

 

Mid-afternoon last Thursday a report surfaced of an exceeding rare Green Warbler being trapped and ringed at Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve. The BBRC database reports just 6 UK sightings of this green beauty. Its rarity is compounded even further by 5 of these records being on remote offshore islands while the remaining one was an almost untwitchable one day wonder in Cornwall. Hence the possibility of a twitchable bird on the UK mainland put the UK birding fraternity into somewhat of a frenzy!

 

The Green Warbler is the more eastern relative of the imaginatively named Greenish Warbler, itself a very scare migrant visitor to these shores. It spends the warmer months breeding in a rather restricted range in Northern Turkey, Caucasus and Northern Iran before returning to Southern India and Sri Lanka to over winter.

 

Later on Thursday reports started to emerge of near rugby scrum conditions at the twitch as birders tried to see and tick the bird in very restricted viewing conditions. In fact some of the report behaviour bordered on loutish and I was very much put off from going.  Thankfully, reports on Friday suggested that this had settled down with much more civilised behaviour on site. The bird was still present on Saturday morning so after sorting out our horses and walking the dogs I casually mentioned the bird to my ever suffering wife who responded just as I hoped with “do you want to go then?”

 

From Pirton Bempton is a 195 mile mostly motorway drive with just the last 40 or so miles being on slow single carriageway roads. With a 30 minute stop for a sandwich lunch I arrived at Bempton at 14:00 intent on spending the remaining  5 or so hours of daylight there. The journey to the small dell where the warbler was located  was a 30 minute or so walk along the cliff top followed by a 10 minute turn inland. The cliffs were absolutely heaving with noisy Gannets and their strange young ones who at this time of year resembled plump oversized Starlings. Although I did not see any juveniles on the wing, many were wing pumping in preparation for their first flight.

 

As I walked along the cliffs I became increasingly concerned about how windy it was. My experience of looking for rare leaf warblers consists of staring at bushes for many hours for short and obscured glimpses of the bird. Worryingly, the Green Warbler was usually being reported as being elusive and the strong wind was certainly going to discourage it from pitching up in the open!

 

The dell was a small oasis in an otherwise rather barren cultivated farmland. It had been planted and nurtured by Cambridgeshire birder and Green Warbler finder Mark Thomas to whom we will be eternally grateful for sharing his wonderful find with us.

 

There were approximately 40 birders present attempting to view the bird from two main viewing areas. The first was very cramped with birders lying down attempting to peer into a narrow walkway into the dell. I was told that the bird had been seen recently but fleetingly at the end of the walkway but you really needed to be positioned centrally to see along it. I hence took up position on the other side of the dell offering a wider view and where at least some social distancing was possible. I also knew that the bird had been photographed in a rowan tree on this side of the dell. There were known to be a number of ringed Willow Warblers also present in the dell. While these could be easily dismissed as such with a reasonable view, a short glancing view certainly had the potential to cause  confusion. Indeed, I must say that some of the calls of “there it is” were, in my humble opinion at least, Willow Warblers. My fears relating to the windy condition were sadly very justified and all birds present remained deep in shelter. I had one very brief view of a strong candidate but was unable to nail down the key characteristics with sufficient certainly. After 5 hours of staring through my scope, mainly at the same area of willows, I left for home cold, windblown and very dispirited.

 

The forecast for Saturday night had the sky clearing and the wind dying providing ideal conditions for the bird to move on. So I was a little surprised to see the bird still reported as being present on Sunday morning. On hearing this news my wife asked if I was going again and somewhat, ok very, madly I set off again arriving a little earlier than the previous day with 7 or so hours of daylight viewing available. The wind on the cliffs had dropped and on arriving at the dell I was told that the bird had showed briefly more out in the open. I took up the same position as on the previous day and after an hour or so of much more pleasant viewing conditions a shout went up of “Green Warbler in bottom of right hand Rowan” and sure enough there it was. I had a good clear 15 second view through my scope and was able to tick the key identification characteristics. The bird was really a little stunner with a long broad pale yellow supercilium and underparts, moss green upper parts and a clear and distinct single wing bar. Over the next couple of hours I had 2 more similar good scope views. The combination of the bird being distant and very unsettled meant that I did not get any usable photos so I am much indebted to my birding friend Ian for the use of his record shots.

 

Green Warbler Curtsey of Ian Bollen

I left the dell around 17:00 pausing on the cliffs to take a few pictures of the Gannets. I had a look for Albert the Albatross on the way back to the car but was told that he had moved to an unviewable position on the cliffs. See here for a blog on my previous visit to Bempton to see him. I arrived home at 21:00 in an all together much better frame of mind than the previous day and celebrated with a very nice glass of Italian red wine while watching the football highlights from the previous day.

 

My beloved Brighton and Hove Albion have had a good start to the season winning three out of four games. I think it took them almost 20 games to win three last year so an altogether better start! Their problem last year, and it’s a fairly serious one in football terms, was scoring goals. I saw an end of season analysis by goals conceded and possession which put them mid table rather than the lowly position they ended up in. Trossard scored a very good and, perhaps on balance, undeserved winning goal at Brentford on Saturday but football does have a way of leveling these things out over  a session. Trossard is one of those frustratingly highly talented but inconsistent players but his goal on Saturday was something special and hopeful he can produce consistent performances to help Brighton to a better league position this year.

 

Who needs CR7 after all!!

Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!