Skip to main content

A Pale Legged leaf Warbler at Bempton, a (live) UK first

    



All photos in this blog are curtsey of my birding buddy – Nick Truby.

 

The absence of birding and hence blogs recently can be explained thus -Covid! Having successfully avoided it over the past 4 years, Carolyn and I finally succumbed. We think we either caught it during a number of recent hospital appointments or, more likely, at our local vets where the receptionist was wearing a mask and coughing quite a lot. It hit us both pretty hard and  a week before I was due to go on my autumnal  birding trip to Shetland I was convinced that I would not be able to make it as I was completely wiped out and could not imagine doing a 450 mile drive. My ever suffering wife, Carolyn, agreed that I could go a day early and split the drive and by departure day I was feeling  just about well enough to go with lots of recovery breaks.

 

There are two possible routes I can take up to the ferry terminal at Aberdeen along either the west or east coast. I decided on the east coast route with an overnight stop somewhere north of Newcastle. I took much more time driving up than I would normally, stopping 4 or 5 times on route. I debated taking a detour for one of the breaks to Spurn to see an Artic Warbler, but, rather wisely I feel,  decided against it.

 

The journey was made all the harder by torrential rain all the way up. I took my last break at Bempton and spent an hour trying to see a mega rare leaf warbler more usually found in China. Leaf warblers can be  hard to see at the best of times, by habit often keeping deep within the vegetation . Although the torrential rain had eased off when I arrived, I still thought my chances of seeing it were very modest, but, somewhat remarkably, I did manage two good views, but no accompanying photos of it, deep within the vegetation.

 

Now this is as rare and as lost as it gets. The BOU records up to 2022 only have one record, a bird found dead after hitting a lighthouse at St Mary’s. Slightly confusingly, however, the Colins bird bible seems to imply there have been 3 previous records. Either way this is the rarest of the rares. Its breeds in the temperate forests of eastern China and winters in south east Asia so this really is one truly lost bird!

 

It has brownish upperparts and a contrasting greyish-brown crown and nape. The whitish supercilium  (eye stripe) contrasts strongly, not reaching the forehead but extending well behind the eyes. Its eyeline is dark brown and wider behind the eye. Its cheeks are mottled pale brown and it has a whitish throat. Its white undertail coverts contrast with a paler olive-brown rump and upper tail coverts. Its breast and belly are  whitish with a washed pale brown wash.

 

After an hours break I continued on my way to Newcastle and totally crashed out in a premier inn for a long sleep.

 

My good birding buddy, Nick,  managed to get some excellent photos the next day in better weather, in fact by far the best I’ve seen of the bird and I’m indebted to him for allowing me to use his  brilliant photos.





 

More Shetland birding blogs will follow in due course.


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


Comments

  1. Old CaleyOctober 13, 2024 at 6:55 AM

    Nice blog Jim and worth the effort. Some decent photos there too.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albert the Albatross

  What is more improbable -   a)     England’ football team    beating Germany in the knockout stages of a major competition   b)     Seeing an Albatross in England   Actually the answer is a) because it has not happened since 1966 rather than b) as Albert the Albatross, as he is affectionally known, has made a number of passing visits to the UK since 1967!   On Monday evening reports started to emerge of Albert associating with the Gannet colony at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, almost one year after his    last brief visit to the same site. During the intervening period there have been a number of sightings of Albert across Europe, particularly from the Baltic Sea where he appears to have spent much of the last 12 months. In fact there were reports that he had been attacked and killed in the area by two eagles.    Reports of his death were clearly greatly exaggerated!   The Black-browed Albatross is ci...
2 comments
Read more

The Hawfinches of the Forest of Dean

   Hawfinch - Forest of Dean, winter 2017 A highlight of my winter birding is my annual trip to the Forest of Dean to see Hawfinches. I was unable to go last year due to the post-Christmas lockdown so this year’s visit was even more richly anticipated than normal.   Parkend in the Forest of Dean is my usual chosen location for watching Hawfinches. Here the proven technique of using your car as a hide normally works well. I must also say that,  after a number of quite strenuous twitches recently, I was also looking forward to a much more leisurely birding session!   The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not enough food to go around.    Records indi...
3 comments
Read more

A visit to see a controversial Canvasback and thoughts on its provenance

   Canvasback ( its the one with the long black beak) curtsey of Nick Truby   Ornamental ducks are perhaps the most difficult and controversial birds that are on the current  British bird list. They are widely kept in collections and as such differentiating a genuine wild vagrant from an escapee is extremely challenging and sometimes impossible. I’ve discussed the issue of proving a birds provenance before, see here , but in summary a ring or isotopic analysis of a sample are required to prove beyond all doubt that the bird is a genuine vagrant. In the absence of this objective evidence of origin much more subjective factors are used to prove that the bird is “probably” a genuine wild bird. You could, however,  strongly argue that in the absence of the definitive evidence above, none of these ornamental ducks should be on the UK list of accepted wild birds   The Canvasback is the North American cousin of our common Pochard and is kept in some UK o...
1 comment
Read more