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| Two-barred Greenish Warbler |
Oh Yorkshire what are you on!
Whatever it is I want some!
By my reckoning Yorkshire has now had had five absolute belting mega rare birds this autumn. So Norfolk I’m afraid the scores on the doors are
Yorkshire 5 – Norfolk 0
Looks as though Norfolk will be battling out the relegation positions with Oxfordshire and Worcestershire!
On Saturday early afternoon news came in that a scarce Red-breasted Flycatcher found earlier at Flamborough was in fact a mega rare Taiga Flycatcher, (3 accepted previous UK records on the BBRC database).
This was hotly followed at 5pm by the news that a Two-barred Greenish Warbler had been found at Spurn, (8 accepted previous UK records on the BBRC database).
This double delight was even more surprising given the prevailing winds were not particularly favourable for pushing migrating birds a long way off course and onto our shores.
Other immoveable commitments on Sunday meant that the first day I could get up to Yorkshire was Monday. During Sunday the Warbler was regularly reported but the Flycatcher had gone. Looking at the forecast weather overnight at Spurn on Sunday I rated my chances as being 50/50 that the bird would stay until Monday.
I decided not to wait for news on Monday, with the darker mornings this would not be until 07:30 at the earliest, but to get up at silly o’clock and risk it. For some stupid reason I had in my head that Spurn is a 2.5 hour drive from home, in fact it is 3.5 hours. I stopped at the motorway services at 07:30 to be greeted with the positive news that the bird was still present, cue some childish fist pumping, celebrated with a breakfast bacon butty with copious tomato ketchup and carried on towards Spurn. The trip to Spurn is always deceptive. The first 160 miles is easy motorway, the last 40 is a slow slog through Hull and then a long drive through the many villages out to the peninsula. To compound the issue there are road works in Hull which were started at least 2 years ago that have an advertised completion date of Spring 2025, how on earth can this be possible, wars have been won and lost in shorter periods of time!
As I approached Spurn I noticed that I had mistakenly put Spurn Point in the sat Nav and it was trying to take me to the lighthouse at the end of the point. This could have proved rather interesting as the road was washed away by a storm a number of years ago and the remaining path sometimes floods at high tide!
As I drove up towards the visitors centre I could see maybe 40 birders staring at the adjacent hedge. I was told that the bird had been showing intermittently and had last been seen 5 minutes ago. I then had an anxious 60 minute wait before I got a glimpse of the bird. While waiting I chatted to my friend and ace photographer Ian who had arrived earlier from his Nottingham home and captured some good pics.
Shortly after my first view I had a slightly more prolonged view of the bird out in the open and what an absolute jewel it was to!
The Two-barred Warbler is one of several forms in the complex group of Greenish Warblers. It breeds in the taiga and wooded areas of south central and eastern Siberia to the Southern slopes of the Sayan mountains where it overlaps with, but apparently does not interbreed with, the more widespread Greenish Warbler. It is very similar to the Greenish Warbler with the main differentiation being the broad white wing bar along the tips of the greater coverts and a shorter narrower wing bar on the median coverts. It can also be confused with the Artic Warbler but it is very rare for this bird to have a second wing bar.
The warbler, like most other leaf warblers, was very lively and active, never staying still for more than a few seconds. I have to say this was not helped by some birders running around chasing after the bird in what looked an episode of the Keystone cops. As is often the case, the bird was doing a circuit and I tried to stay still and wait for it to come around in what looked like a photogenic spot and indeed it obliged briefly twice during the morning but I never managed to get my camera locked onto to it before it shot off.
Around 12:30 I went back to my car, had my lunch baguette and orange juice, and had a think about how to improve the chances of getting a half decent photo. I decided to take the x 1.4 converted off of the 500mm lens, which makes the autofocus much quicker, and compromise the image size. I also had the 800mm with me but decided to stick with the bare 500mm. The bulky 800m is not really suited to getting rapidly on a very mobile bird.
I retired back to the same spot and over the course of a couple of hours managed to get some half decent pictures that showed the key characteristics.
Come 4pm I grabbed a takeaway tea from the visitors centre and set off to do battle with the Hull roadworks.
At the start of this year I made a conscious decision not to chase a year list, rather it would be what it would be. Instead I set myself the target of getting 15 new UK lifers and some decent photos of a few birds that I had struggled with in the past, Wood Warbler for example. The Two-barred greenish has taken me to a very pleasing 22 new birds for the year. Hopefully, I will still be able to add one or two more.
Nice one mate :-)
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