If its avian bling that you are after you would be hard pressed to beat a Hoopoe, a scarce passage migrant to the UK.
In preparation for its passage to Africa, a very showy individual of said bird has been fattening itself up on grubs for the past few days on a Warwick industrial estate just 40 minutes from home. I’ve seen a number of Hoopoes, both in the UK and in their winter home of Africa, but have never got a decent photo. I hence found myself sitting on the grass by the reception of IBM late morning today with a handful of other birders and photographers watching this exotic visitor.
Hoopoes are fairly common and widespread across Europe, Asia, and Africa but only occur as a scare spring and autumn passage vagrant to the UK. In a good year perhaps 50 birds are seen in the UK. There are three recognised species, the Eurasian Hoopoe which spends the warmer months in Europe before migrating to Africa for the winter and the resident African and Madagascan Hoopes. In all honestly, having looked at pictures of all three, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference! As an interesting aside, there was a fourth, essential flightless, Hoopoe species, the extinct Saint Helena Hoopoe, which suffered the fate of many endemic flightless birds in the 16th century when man introduced predators.
To say the Hoopoe is an unusual and exotic looking bird would be somewhat of an understatement. They have a very long wader like downcurved bill which they use to probe the ground to find insects. Perhaps their most startling feature, however, is their long pinkish-brown crest which is raised in spectacular fashion when they are excited. For such a stunning bird they have, what to our senses anyway, is one very unappealing habit. The female has a gland which secretes a noxious and foul smelling liquid which intimates rotting flesh which she smears on her nest hence deterring unwelcome predators!
Watching the Warwick visitor it was immediately obvious what the attraction of this one patch of grass was – it was absolutely loaded with some form of large white juicy grub which I could not identify. It would spend maybe 10 to 15 minutes vigorously probing the grass to locate and gobble down these tasty morsels then fly off to a perch for a short post meal rest. I started counting how many of these grubs it was pulling up and in one ten minute period it woofed down 8 of them. I would hence guess that it is very successfully putting weight on prior to its long migration to Africa. It would occasionally have a good old stretch and raise its crest to the great appreciation and joy of all who were watching. At one point several Pied Wagtails feeding near by shouted their piercing alarm call and flew off taking the Hoopoe with them. The reason for the alarm was soon obvious as a Sparrowhawk passed over. Thankfully our exotic visitor was not on the Sparrowhawk’s lunch menu on this occasion!
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