Skip to main content

A stonking adult male Desert Wheatear at Keynham, Somerset


          

There seems to be a bit of a developing theme here! 

 

I checked our ‘birding the Uk and Ireland“ WhatsApp group as I was going to bed yesterday and discovered that a really stonking male adult Desert Wheatear had been found just an hour down the M5 from home! Again someone had posted a picture on social media of a bird that had apparently been present around the playing fields at Keynham for the last week.

 

I’ve seen Desert Wheatear in the UK before but never an adult male in summer plumage so when it was again reported early morning today a visit was a definite no brainer! I had a couple of jobs to do around our small holding first thing so it wasn’t until around 10:30 that I parked up and walk down to the reported position by Keynham playing fields.

 

I met Ady and his gang from Oxford and he told me that the Wheatear had just been flushed by a jogger. Bu**er! Had I got this one completely wrong? Should I have left home first thing?

 

In the end it was no panic as,  after maybe 15 minutes, the Wheatear flew back to its favourite fence and , as they say, proceeded to “show well”.

 

Both western and eastern forms of the Desert Wheatear are rare vagrants to UK but I’m not sure that this bird has been tied down to subspecies level yet. The western subspecies breeds in the Sahara  and the northern Arabian peninsula. The eastern race is found in the semi-deserts of central Asia and in winter in Pakistan and northeast Africa. So its fair to say that this little chap is well and truly lost! The plumage of the upper parts of the male in summer is buff. The underparts are white with a buff tinge on the breast. The black on the face and throat extends to the shoulders, and there is a distinct white superciliary stripe. It is a bird normally found in  barren open countryside, steppes, deserts, semi-arid plains, saltpans, dried up river beds and sandy, stony and rocky wasteland, hence the name Desert Wheatear.

 

The behaviour of the Keynham bird was very similar to our comparatively common Northern Wheatear, perching up on the fence line surveying the grass land for insects. When one was spotted it would dash down onto the playing fields, snatch the insect and fly back to its perch on the fence. 










cheating with photoshop!


 

We typically get two or maybe three vagrants in the uk per year but most are autumn first winter birds like this one I saw in Devon with Jeremy some ten years ago. No disrespect to these first winter birds but the Keynsham adult in summer plumage was in another razzmatazz category all together.


First winter male, Devon, 2016

After maybe two hours and much too many photos, I left my film star bird, grabbed a quick lunch in a local café and then made my way home feeling very happy with my desert encounter.

 

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


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Albert the Albatross

    High quality framed and unframed prints available at   https://www.etsy.com/shop/BirdlifeStudio If you don't see what you want please ask! 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 att...

The Hawfinches of the Forest of Dean

   Hawfinch - Forest of Dean, winter 2017 High quality framed and unframed prints available at   https://www.etsy.com/shop/BirdlifeStudio If you don't see what you want please ask! 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 thoug...

Ok I'll admit it - I'm in love with Wrynecks and Autumn fun on the farm!

  High quality framed and unframed prints available at   https://www.etsy.com/shop/BirdlifeStudio If you don't see what you want please ask! There are precious few birds that I’ve both seen and photographed well that I will drive 2 hours to see but I will make an exception for my favourite UK bird, the enigmatic Wryneck. No autumn birding in the UK is complete for me unless I have seen at least one of these beauties. So Monday morning found me in the Volvo driving 2 hours to see an exceptionally showy individual located at Exminster Marshes RSPB in Devon.   As it had already been present for a couple of days, I waited for it to be reported before setting off  and so it was near midday when I arrived at the small RSPB car park adjacent to the railway line. It was then a 30 minute or so walk down a pleasant leafy footpath to the welcoming looking Turf hotel. The hotel is next to Turf lock from where stunning views can be had over the river Exe estuary towards Exto...