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With Monday forecast to be a lovely bright sunny day and autumn migration in full swing, a day out birding definitely seemed to be the order of the day. I was tempted by a showy Lesser Grey Shrike, a bird I have only seen once before in the UK, on the Norfolk coast at a place called Winterton-on Sea. I have been birding at this very pleasant location before and knew that the grassy dunes and adjacent scrubby bushes were a great spot for some autumn birding. Being +3 hours from home, I hatched a plan to break the journey midway with a stop off in Cambridgeshire to see a Lesser Yellowlegs, a rare American vagrant that I have seen a number of times before but never photographed particularly well.
The Yellowlegs was on some still active gravel extraction pits at a small village called Etton near Peterborough. Some internet searching informed me that this wader had been seen on two of the finished flooded pits which were located next to a footpath. There was no access to the pits themselves but a number of photographs indicated that the Yellowlegs had occasionally showed well in the corner of the Pig Jaw pit close to the footpath. The footpath ran from the small country road parallel to a drainage ditch before it went over a bridge constructed to allow the heavy extraction machinery to get over the drain. It was only after my visit that I realised my good friend Nick had visited the same site the previous weekend and that I could have saved myself the time researching the site by asking him about it!
I arrived on site around 10 am and soon found the south drain running under an attractive stone bridge over the road. There was a well-trodden path next to the drain but, somewhat disconcertingly, no footpath signs. I decided to trust my map and made my way along the footpath accessed via a gap by an unwelcoming looking locked metal gate. I could hear the extraction vehicles working on the closeby still active pits and could also see the bridge over the drain in the distance. The pits were very close to the village and I can only imagine the uproar and protest when planning permission was applied for. Despite the somewhat industrial atmosphere, the walk along the grassy footpath was very pleasant and my spirts were soon lifted by the warm autumnal sun and the busy activity of many common birds along the path. I arrived at the bridge to discover that it also carried a rather dilapidated looking conveyer belt carrying newly dug grit to a processing site on the other side of the drain. Here the footpath was well marked and a separate small rickety looking bridge took me over the conveyer belt and right next to the strangely named Pig Jaw pit whose shape bore no resemblance to its namesake.
It was a large rectangular shaped pit and it was immediately obvious that it would only yield distant views unless the wader was feeding along a small gravelly section of the shore right next to the path. Today my luck was in and I picked up the Lesser Yellowlegs on that same said shore within a few seconds of putting my bins to my eyes.
The Lesser Yellowlegs rates as a one start rarity in the Colins bird bible meaning 5 to 10 UK records/year. Its cousin, the Greater Yellowlegs, is an even rarer UK vagrant with only 36 accepted records to the end of 2022. I was fortunate enough to see one in Scotland a number of years back with Jeremey.
The Lesser Yellowlegs breeds in the boreal forest region of North America and migrates to spend winter on the Gulf coast of the USA , the Caribbean and south America. In breeding plumage, the upperparts are mottled with grey-brown, black, and white. The underparts are white with irregular brown streaking on the breast and neck. In non-breeding plumage, the upperparts are more uniform grey brown. The legs, it goes without saying, are bright pillar box red.
It was initially a bit distant for photography so I watched it feeding in my scope. It looked stunning in the golden autumnal sun. The footpath overlooking the pit was on a raised bank, not ideal for hiding my presence so I laid down on the ground to keep as low a profile as possible and sure enough Mr. Yellowlegs soon made his way along the shore giving me my desired photo opportunities.
Then it was onwards to Winterton-on-sea a typical small quaint Norfolk coastal village. A road leads down to a small café and car park on the beach, which, rather unhelpfully, was advertised to close at 5pm. The cost to park, to me at least ,seemed a bit of a rip-off at £2/hour. The news got worse when I went to pay in the café as I was told that it was very quiet and they planned to lock up at 4pm. At odds to this, the car park at this point was almost full! I drove back the short distance to the village where, at least at this time of year, free parking was readily available.
On the 20 minute walk across the grass covered dunes to the Shrike I saw a number of Wheatear actively feeding up before continuing their migration southwards. Shrikes are one of the easier bird species to find and see when present, often hunting beetles and other invertebrates from an exposed perch on a fence post or bush. This Lesser Grey Shrike very much kept to its script in the 2 hours I was there and afforded excellent views.
The Lesser Grey Shrike affords a two start rarity rating in the Colins bird bible equating to some one or a few annual records in the UK. It breeds in South and Central Europe and Western Asia and winters in southern Africa. It is similar in appearance but, not surprisingly, slightly smaller, than its more common vagrant cousin, the Greater Grey Shrike being predominately grey and white with the characteristic Shrike’s bandit eye stripe. It shares other Shrike’s habit of storing excess food in a thorny larder giving it is colloquial name of butcher bird.
At 5pm I started to make my way home. For once I narrowly avoided road overnight road closures on the M6 and M42. The latter I just missed being one of the last cars through and hence avoiding the horrible diversion through Birmingham that I’ve had to do before. Many years of disruption and countryside vandalism just so it’s possible to save a few minutes on the London to Birmingham train journey by means of the white elephant known as HS2.
And yes, because I know someone will point this out, the Lesser Yellowlegs does indeed have yellow rather than red legs!
As a footnote, the Shrike departed overnight, so, for once, my timing was excellent!
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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