It’s not often that we get to do a lot of birdwatching together but yesterday was an exception.
The late-breaking news on Thursday night about the Eastern Crowned Warbler in Trow Quarry, South Shields, was exciting but we couldn’t be sure when (or if) we would have a chance to go and see the biggest avian star of this autumn (at least the biggest so far…). The stumbling block was a hospital appointment at 08:50 on Friday. We could have gone into the deep south for dawn, and then travelled to the hospital after that, but we decided to wait and go once our other commitments were dealt with. Thankfully, the surgeon made a very quick decision (perhaps she knew how twitchy I was getting?) and we were free to join the crowds overlooking the trees in Trow Quarry. The bird appeared soon after we arrived and what a stunning bird it was. With a Yellow-browed Warbler for company, the differences between the two closely-related species were very obvious. As the crowd swelled, we departed…back into Northumberland and to Holy Island in search of more rare warblers. After the drive up the A1 we crossed the causeway, checked the bushes behind the car park for the Radde’s Warbler that had been there on Thursday (no luck though), then along the Crooked Lonnen for a Barred Warbler that had been seen yesterday morning (no luck there either, although one birder did his best…by misidentifying three consecutive Redwings!). A walk through the dune slack on the Snook revealed Alan Gilbertson, who had seen a Pallas’s Warbler a few minutes earlier. We settled into a gap in the dunes between two sets of trees, and I began to arrange my tripod and camera. Just at the point when the tripod head separated into it’s component parts, like a Manfrotto Meccano set, Sarah followed some movement in the tree behind my head and calmly announced “there it is”. Less than 20ft away and I was unable to get my camera on it. Never mind, we lifted our binoculars and took in the beauty of the ‘seven-striped sprite’. The ECW may have been the rarest bird we’ve seen this year, but there are very few birds that can rival Pallas’s Warbler in appearance.
This morning the forecast rain hadn’t arrived so we set out early, grabbing a bacon butty for sustenance, and headed to Druridge Bay. Checking a flock of tits and ‘crests, in the cold, wind and light drizzle, revealed the prize we were searching for; a Firecrest, one of those few birds that really can rival Pallas’s Warbler.
So, two days out birding together, a good haul of cracking birds…and a few thoughts for future blog topics have taken root in my mind as well.