At last,first twitch of the year and on Holy Island,Northumberland,a strange-looking Sylvia warbler,thought initially to be a female-type Subalpine when found yesterday,miraculously it morphed into an Asian desert warbler later that evening.
I was off tomorrow so I got my stuff sorted out and set off just after 3.30am.I had a good run on the motorways and had news that the bird was still present whilst driving up there at around 4.30am.I arrived on site just after 7.30am and soon got directions on arrival where the bird was showing.On arrival this was the view I was greeted with,it was in there!
I saw Sam viles who put me straight on the bird!
What a little cracker! The bird was so active feeding and flitting around in the foliage.The bird then flew over to next pine and then flew again over a sand dune but was re found after a good ten minutes in another area and I watched it for the next couple of hours.
Well at last this had put to bed the 20-year wait for a twitchable individual.It is still a remarkably rare bird in Britain with just a dozen records,half of which came in a crazy five-year spell in the late '80s and early '90s.Aside from a single-observer record in Kent in November 2012,we have to look back as far as the turn of the century for another example,when one spent five hot spring days basking in the Spurn recording area in May 2000,undoubtedly making the Holy Island individual a real rarity.
On my way home I connected with another Rosy starling at Collingham in North yorkshire which showed really well feeding on wild cherries,this was my second adult male in a week.
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