Rare Bird Alert weekly round-up: 17 - 23 October 2012

The week's highlights:
Britain’s second-ever Chestnut-eared Bunting appears at southern end of Mainland Shetland
…and a Siberian Rubythroat sneaks in for good measure….
Fife’s Eastern Olivaceous Warbler the main draw of the weekend
Tacumshin lands yet another Northern Harrier
Two East coast Red-flanked Bluetails appear on a manic Monday
…nice fall in many North Sea coasts too……
Scilly holds on to Blackpoll Warbler and Solitary Sandpiper
…and an American Buff-bellied Pipit gets the retrospective thumbs-up

A little bit of respite came forth for a few days this week but, as is often the way, it wasn’t set to last ~ a look at the five-day forecast around the 18th and 19th showed that, if things fell in to place, something very promising was on the cards for the east coast from around the 21st…..
…and that was indeed the case! Gentle northeasterly winds and heavy cloud (often fog) did their best to force any number of common, scarce and rare birds towards North Sea coastal counties ~ some tremendous numbers of common migrant species were logged on the murky Monday of 22nd ~ but with the long finger of high pressure squeezing itself between a couple of weak drizzly areas it looked as though the further north you were, the rarer the birds would be A(nd the clearer the skies were too).
And so it came to pass….

Headline birds
As we were packing up the bags after another week at the RBA round-up coal face, it all decided to go a little bit crazy…..

Shetland was, inevitably given the outstanding weather that had settled all the way along the east coast, the island at the heart of it all and within very quick succession, two birds that featured in dispatches at the end of last week’s review were this week’s“grande dames“ taking a post-darkness curtain call on 23rd ….

Right at the top of a significant heap was the presumed Chestnut-eared Bunting found at Virkie, at the south end of Mainland.

Initially identified in the field as a Little Bunting, opinion started to sway after a photo was posted on the Nature-in-Shetland Facebook page. A surge of opinion towards the bird becoming Britain’s second (and, of course, Shetland’s second) Chestnut-eared Bunting ~ eight years, almost to the day, since the first ~ followed on swiftly……

To be fair to all involved, as this was being written in the wee small hours of Wednesday morning, many people were still reluctant to commit wholly to the idea of a full-on Chestnut-eared Bunting until further images were looked at and Little Bunting could be absolutely ruled out and Chestnut-eared Bunting could be ruled in….

….and a couple more images did appear late on, and appeared to confirm that the distinctive face pattern ~ lacking black behind the eye ~ well patterned upperparts, reduced (concentrated) area of breast streaking, fine marks along the flank, lack of any significant primary projection, smallish head + large body combo and a long-tailed look all pointed towards the mega option….

Meanwhile much more of last week's news in the full round-up online including;
Siberian Rubythroat on Fair Isle plus stats and facts on previous records
Video of Ring-necked Ducks on Scilly, Lesser Yellowlegs in Kerry and Red-breasted Flycatcher in Cornwall
Escaped Egyptian Vulture in North Norfolk excites everyone, for a brief while anyway!

Plus much more...