Fantastic Flamborough delivers late autumn gold (the history and current status of the Red-headed Bunting in the UK)
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| First winter Red-headed Bunting |
There really was only one place to go birding this weekend, Flamborough on the east coast of Yorkshire above Hull. On offer was a Red-headed Bunting, potentially the second UK record, another mega in the form of a Two-barred Greenish Warbler, a Pallas’s Warbler, and a Dusky Warbler.
Saturday looked the better of the two weekend days so I left home at 05:30 for the 4 hour drive to Yorkshire. After a couple of breaks I pulled up at Flamborough head just before 10:00, parked up at the Lighthouse carpark and paid £4.50 for all day parking. Not too surprisingly, many other birders had had the same idea, it fact it felt like a Shetland 2023 reunion with so many familiar faces from our autumn holiday present.
Faced with such a glut of rare birds to see I was in a dilemma as to what to go for first. My priority for the day was the Bunting as, if accepted by the powers to be, this would be a UK tick for me. However, with the sun out, I decided to try for some of the warblers first, probably the wrong decision as it turned out – read on!
Flamborough head is a hot spot for vagrants on autumn and spring migration and I’ve been there many times before, my first Greenish Warbler and my only UK viewing of a Thrush Nightingale are vivid and happy memories. Below the lighthouse an area of scrub, mainly consisting of bramble, is a rest haven for tired vagrants flying in off the ocean and this is where the Two-barred and Pallas’s Warblers were located. Both were pretty much immediately obvious, frantically flying up and around the undergrowth in typical leaf warbler fashion searching for insects. They were hence highly mobile but I got some great bin views, a few half reasonable pics of the Pallas’s but nothing worth keeping of the two-barred.
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. I saw my only other Two-barred Warbler at Spurn a few years back, see here.
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| Two-barred Greenish Warbler, Spurn, 2022 |
Pallas’s Leaf Warbler breeds from Siberia through to northeast China where it nests in the taiga forests. It is named after the German Zoologist Peter Simon Pallas who has a number of other birds named after him. It is strongly migratory wintering in North-eastern Indochina. Along with some other Leaf Warblers, most notably the Yellow-browed Warbler, first winter birds are increasingly being found in Europe during winter, probably due to a phenomena called reverse migration, see here. This begs the question as to what happens to the ones that survive the winter here? Based on most vagrants being first winter birds the vast majority don’t return even though reverse migration is thought to be hardwired into their DNA. Sadly, the conclusion seems to be that they perish somewhere. This is the second one I have seen this year after one at Attenborough NR in March, see here.
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| Pallas's Warbler, Attenborough NR March 2023 |
After an hour or so I decided to make my way to the location of the Red-headed Bunting which was a muddy 45 minutes’ walk away up the coastline. On route I passed a succession of returning birders who told me that the bunting had been showing intermittently on its favourite hedge line adjacent to a stubble field where it had been feeding. I joined perhaps 20 other birders staring intently, as is our strange want, at a hedge line some 40 odd meters away. The bunting soon flew into the middle of the hedge and spent 10 minutes preening and tidying itself up before it flew back to the ground. This is how my next two hours were spent with the bird on display every 20 minutes or so in the hedge for a few minutes before returning to the ground to feed. It has to be said that being a first winter bird in moult, it was a fairly tatty looking thing bearing very little resemblance to the attractive adult it was hopefully destined to become.
While waiting for the Bunting to reappear, an attractive Mealy Redpoll was spotted in the hedge together with some bright Yellow Hammers and a Reed Bunting.
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| Mealy Redpoll and friends |
The Red-headed Bunting has a fairly mottled history in terms of British records. Its status is currently being reviewed by the British Ornithologists' Union Records Committee (BOURC). It presently sits on Category D of the BOURC British list, i.e. a species that would otherwise appear in Category A except that there is reasonable doubt that they have ever occurred in a natural state. Pre 1982 it was widely kept in captivity and Uk records were all thought to be escaped birds. Since a ban on their export came into force in 1982 the frequency of occurrence has rapidly diminished. Prior to the Flamborough bird there have only been 4 Uk records since the turn of the century. The most recent record prior to the Flamborough bird was a first-winter male on Out Skerries, Shetland, from 2-8 October 2010 and this record looks very likely to be added to the British list as a national first. Hence the Flamborough bird is a strong contender for the UK’s second genuine wild bird record.
It has a wide breeding range in central Asia-Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and China. It migrates to India and Bangladesh for the winter. The male in breeding plumage has bright yellow underparts, green upperparts and a brownish-red face and breast. Here is what our ugly duckling should become, you can see why they were widely kept as caged birds
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| Adult male Red-headed Bunting |
Our first winter bird is a rather washed-out version of the male, with paler underparts, a grey brown back and a greyish head and, as such, can be difficult to separate from the juvenile Black-headed Bunting. It is in winter moult with most of the greater coverts and tail feathers in the process of being replaced, hence its rather tatty appearance. A poo sample has been collected so DNA analysis should hopefully confirm that it is indeed a Red-headed Bunting.
Come early afternoon I squelched back along the costal path to the lighthouse for second dibs of the warblers. The Two-barred had relocated a short distance to an area known as the motorway hedge. I just missed it feeding out in the open in a wildflower area, presumably on aphids or spiders, and got fleeting views of it moving about in the hedge. The weather had gone through a complete change from the warm sunny morning to a cool, damp and overcast afternoon. Corresponding to this the warblers habits had also completely changed and it spent the rest of the afternoon unseen, presumably buried in the hedge. The Pallas’s Warbler did put in a number of brief appearances but nothing as confiding as its morning performance. I should probably have stayed with the warblers for longer in the morning to get some decent photos but heigh-ho hindsight is a wonderful thing and at least I had had good views of all the birds I wanted to see. Having had good views of a Dusky Warbler a few weeks ago on Shetland, I didn’t try for the rather elusive Flamborough bird. Perhaps the most interesting thing of note during the afternoon was the number of tiny Goldcrests that were feeding in the wildflower area. To say that these, presumably first winter birds, were confiding and fearless would be a gross understatement. At times they were scuttling around under our feet and we had to be careful not to tread on them
Come 16:30 the light was rapidly fading and so I made my way back home to Pirton content that Flamborough head had once again lived up to its reputation and delivered an excellent days birding. I wonder what bird my next visit will bring?
At home the weather has not been kind to the small holding. Our base soil is blue clay which only exists in two phases, cracked concrete and slush, with nothing in-between. We have to expect a few waterlogged months in the winter but storm Babet delivered so much rain that the ground is now in full on winter mode with the quad bike being the only reasonable form of transport. Most of my gardening activity this time of year is spent tidying up and putting the garden to bed for the winter. The green house produce has all been harvested and either eaten or frozen down for later consumption. The cuttings for next year’s hanging baskets have been taken and are just starting to root up. Many hundreds of barrow loads of rotted horse manure have been incorporated into the clay soil of the veg patch in order to try and improve the consistency and fertility. The back late summer hot flower border is still blooming, the canna’s in particular have grown and flowered like triffids this year and my last job will be lifting them after the first frost together with the tender Dahlias and perennial Lobelias to over winter them in the heated green house.
Great blog as usual.
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