A Collared Flycatcher at Kilnsea

The Collared Flycatcher and I have a little history. A few years back I thought I had seen one in the Warren at Spurn. Being a female, distinguishing this bird from a Pied Flycatcher was by no means straightforward but it was caught and examined in the hand and believed to display the necessary distinguishing characteristics. On this basis I ticked it. A good few months later I was talking to Oxon and ex-Yorkshire birder Mick Cunningham as we both dipped a Rufus Bush Chat in Norfolk and he told me that DNA analysis had confirmed that the Spurn bird was in fact a Pied Flycatcher! Quite  a memorable dip as my UK bird list had gone down rather than up by one!

 

Fast forward to this Friday and I was having a morning coffee with Carolyn when a report of a bird trapped at Kilnsea in Yorkshire hit the bird alert services. As this bird was an absolutely stonking male there was no doubt about its identification. I begged forgiveness from my ever suffering wife and set off on the almost 4 hour drive to Kilnsea excited to be doing my first twitch for almost 3 months. I’d only been on the road for half an hour when the dreaded “no further sign” message appeared on RBA. Now I really didn’t fancy carrying on for what would have totalled 7 hours of driving to dip yet another bird at Spurn, Great Snipe and Artic Warbler falling into this category in the past year. So I pulled over at a service station and sat down with a coffee. After 30 minutes with no further news I typed a message to Carolyn that I was on my way home with my tail firmly between my legs but just as I sent the message a report came in that it had been seen briefly again.

 

Some 3 hours later I arrived on site to find 10 or so birders on the verge looking at a somewhat distant hedgerow. After a couple of minutes the Flycatcher flew into view clearly displaying the white vicars dog collar which gives it its name.

 

The Collared Flycatcher is one of four species of black and white flycatcher found in the Western Palearctic the other three being the Semi-collared, Atlas and Pied Flycatcher. As far as I’m aware only the Pied and Collared have been recorded in the UK with the Collared being considered a mega rare vagrant. It breeds in southeast Europe and winters in  sub Saharan Africa.

 

The views through my scope were very good but it was a little too distant for photography. It was flying in and out of a blackthorn hedge covered in mayflower doing exactly what it says on the tin, i.e. catching flies. The flycatcher was still present on Saturday but, with clear overnight skies, it departed overnight and was not seen on Sunday. I often wonder where these displaced migrants go when they move on. Will it reorientate and fly east to its breeding grounds? It has been identified as a bird hatched last spring so this is the first return journey from Africa it will have made. The are  reasons for bird vagrancy  discussed in great detail in "Vagrancy in Birds" which I have reviewed in a previous blog, see here. If it is a storm blown vagrant I guess it might try to fly east. If it’s a DNA coding error I guess it won’t. They do hybridise with our Pied Flycatchers on the border of their ranges where they overlap so perhaps it will find solace in a UK female Pied Flycatcher mate.

After watching the dainty Flycatcher for an hour or so I decided, rather than drive straight home, to pay a visit to Flamborough head where a well-marked Eastern Stonechat had been reported. While this is only a 40 mile trip in reality it’s a long and windy 90 minute drive up the coast. I arrived just past 5 with the sun making a rather pathetic attempt to come out from behind thick cloud. As I parked my car in the lighthouse car park I saw another birder returning from the reported general direction. He informed me that the Stonechat was still showing well and gave me good directions to its location in a bramble patch adjacent to the so called motorway hedge. 

 

Showing well is an often used phrase and, in my experience, can vary from meaning that the bird is a few  to several hundred feet away. In this case it was the former and easy to find on the brambles. Stonechats are often very confiding birds and this chap was true to form perching up on the brambles perhaps 20 meters away. It then flew towards me and again sat on the brambles no more than 5 meters away while giving me a rather inquisitive stare. It soon decided I really wasn’t that interesting and so completely ignored me and burst into song.

 

We have three species of Stonechat on the UK list and I have previously seen all three. Together with our Common European Stonechat we have two species of Eastern Stonechat, namely the Siberian and Stejneger’s Stonechats. Distinguishing the two eastern species in the field is troublesome and normally requires DNA sequencing for a definitive identification. The Flamborough bird is believed to be Siberian but DNA samples have been obtained which will eventually tie the bird down to species level. As the name suggests, these are birds normally found in Eastern Russia and Asia.

 

The Siberian Stonechat resembles our Common Stonechat but differs in being paler below, with a white rump and whiter underparts with less orange on the breast. The male in breeding plumage has black upperparts and head (lacking the brownish tones of the European stonechat), a conspicuous white collar, scapular patch and rump, and a restricted area of orange on the throat.

 

The Flamborough bird was an easy bird to photograph clearly showing the above characteristics. It was certainly full of character and a real joy to watch as it jumped from bramble to bramble pausing for a quick burst of song before dropping briefly to the ground to pick up an insect.

   

A truly wonderful  way to finish a memorable day out before departing for the long journey home. The emotional difference between seeing or not seeing your target bird on these long drives home is hard to describe but very extreme. There can’t be too many hobbies where the difference between ecstasy and agony is marked by such small margins!

 

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