Skip to main content

A mega rare Zitting Cisticola in Suffolk

  


 

The photo above was taken by my mate Nick  in Lesvos earlier this spring

 

The Zitting Cisticola, alternatively called Fan-tailed Warbler, is a comparatively  common bird in continental Europe and has often been speculated as next on the list to colonise the UK. To date, however, this has not happened and it remains an exceedingly rare bird in the UK with just eight accepted records to the end of 2022.  So when one was found in Kent earlier this year I had the car packed and ready to go just as a report of the bird doing a runner hit the alert services not to be seen again.

 

Fast forward to this Sunday just gone and a keen eyed birder found another, or perhaps the same, bird at a place called Walberswick in Suffolk just along the coast from the Mimsmere RSPB reserve. Slightly irritatingly, I was very close to this site the previous Friday when I went to see a very confiding juvenile Black Stork – see here. To put its rarity value into context, Bird Guides have said that this is the first twitchable bird for 15 years.

 

Other family commitments meant that the first day I could go was this Tuesday. Given that it was a three and a half hour drive from home, more like four with breaks, I decided to wait for it to be reported which indeed it was just before 06:00  and I was in the car and gone by just after that time. Walberswick turned out to be a very pleasant if somewhat busy seaside resort approach down  a small no through road . The Cisticola was located some 20 minutes along the coast from the car park. Unlike my previous visit to Suffolk for the Stork it was a pleasantly sunny day with a blustery wind. As I walked along the sand dunes the exact location of the bird soon became obvious  as I could see a group of birders staring intently across the salt marsh.

 

On arrival others present told me that the warbler had just shown in flight but had dropped back down into the reeds. Maybe 10 minutes later a shout of “it’s up” went up and for a few frustrating moments, when time seemed to standstill, I could not locate it but then the chap next to me said “its over the church high up above the clouds” and with a big sigh of relief I got onto it giving me UK life tick number 427. 

 

This bird has a very wide breeding range from southern Europe and Africa across to southern Asia right down to northern Australia and it is a year round resident, i.e. non migratory.  To be absolutely honest, it is not the most spectacular looking bird being  more of a little brown jobby. It is brown above, heavily streaked with black markings. The underparts are whitish, and the tail is broad, white-tipped and flicked frequently, giving rise to the alternative name for the species.

 

Its flight and call are what gives it its name and provides it with a very endearing character. During the breeding season males have a zigzagging flight display accompanied by regular "zitting" calls that have been likened to repeated snips of a scissor. The behaviour of the Suffolk bird has identified it as a male.

 

Watching the bird in flight it did exactly what it says on the tin, high prolonged zigzagging flight displays while announcing its presence with its Zitting call. It was some distance away meaning that photography wasn’t really an option. The blustery wind also inhibited it from perching up on the vegetation so it dived straight into the reed bed after every song flight. I guess it entertained us with 3 or 4 of this song flights up to lunch when I decided to make a move and spent a pleasant and chilled out afternoon at Mimsmere where Bittern and Marsh Harrier were the main highlights.


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

Comments

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