A date with a Collared Pratincole

I’ve seen two Collared Pratincoles before in the UK both distantly and hence badly. So when one was found at Slimbridge on Thursday, just 30 minutes from home it would have simply been rude not to go. I had some domestic chores to do early on Friday so couldn’t leave home until 10 am. Checking RBA I saw that the Pratincole was showing well on the South Island so off I went.

The Collared Pratincole rates as a two star rarity in the Colins bird bible equating to one or a few yearly records. It is one of three Pratincoles that have occurred in the UK, the others being the much rarer Black-winged and Oriental Pratincoles. All three are very similar and good views are needed to distinguish between them. Pratincoles are classified as waders although in habit they bear little resemblance to them in that they typically hunt their insect prey on the wing flying very rapidly back and forth like Swallows. They have short legs, long pointed wings, a long forked tail, and a short bill, which is an adaptation to aerial feeding. The back and head are brown, and the wings are brown with darker flight feathers. The belly is white. The underwings are chestnut but look dark from below. They breed in Southern Europe, north and central Africa and central Asia migrating south to south Africa and India for the winter.

I met my good birding friends Nick and Anne from Oxford in the discovery hide and we had excellent views of the bird hawking back and forth rapidly over the water. Nick got some great flight shots, see here, but I really struggled with the tiny openings in the Slimbridge hide. While I can just about get my 500mm lens through the slot, I end up with no manoeuvrability and hence can’t follow the bird in flight. Fortuitously, after the extended hawking session, the Pratincole landed on the nearest small island allowing me to get some back lit photos of it on the ground.

After an hour or so we retired to the café for a warming bowl of soup and coffee and a good natter. Anne and Nick left after lunch and I briefly popped into the Rushy hide before making my way back up a very busy M5. Rather than go straight home I decided to pop into Grimley where four Bearded Tits had been found a couple of days ago. As I got out of the car it started raining and it did not stop for the next couple of hours. I got a couple of flight views of the beardies but it was obvious that they had no intention of coming out of the deep cover into the open, given the weather I could hardly blame them.

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

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