Rare Bird Alert weekly round-up: 19 - 25 September 2012

The week's highlights:
Fair Isle lands a star on Sunday ~ Britain’s second-ever Magnolia Warbler
Foula pops in with a “west meets east” special ~ Swainson’s Thrush and Sykes’s Warbler
….and then a Blyth’s Pipit follows the next day……
White’s Thrush braves the gales and find itself on Inner Farne
The Wirral peep kicks off a new ID debate, and ties in with the Uist bird too
Successive American Buff-bellied Pipits arrive on the Outer Hebrides and one reaches County Cork
Both juvenile Short-billed Dowitchers head in to another week
The Rainham Marshes Baillon’s Crake continues its autumn stay for a little longer
….and, at last, the east coast gets birds, Yellow-browed Warblers leading the way…..

Wow. What can you say? What an incredible week. After weeks of anticipation (and several high quality birds already) through the early part of the autumn, this week saw some wonderful vagrants making landfall in the Northern Isles, along with a fulsome supporting cast of rarities and scarcities across the rest of Britain and Ireland.

The weather produced some torrid conditions across some parts of Britain as former Hurricane Nadine whipped through the English Channel and off to the continent, pressure deepening all the while ~ after the strong westerlies came equally brisk easterlies and one or two charts looked right on the money as the weekend approached.

….and sure enough, Nadine delivered…..and, funnily enough, despite the foul conditions to the south, one of the best birds of recent years appeared within a deep geo bathed in autumn sunshine, with calm seas below and not a hint of the grim wet weather that was lashing the country to the south…..

It had been a long time coming but there was little doubt that the autumn was here, finally, and with a very big bang to boot……

Anyway. Enough already…there are megas to discuss…..!


Headline birds
There are some birds from the past three decades or so that have had that certain je ne se quoi. For many years one of them was Yellow-browed Bunting. Another was Cream-coloured Courser. There was Siberian Rubythroat too and many, many years ago, even Pallid Harrier. All of those have appeared in the recent past and their air of mystery has vanished, to some degree or another….

…..then there are species that remain a step above even those supreme gems….Aleutian Tern, Egyptian Nightjar, Houbara and a few more besides…nestling amongst them, despite their collective “commoner” vibe, a select band of one-time only, much longed-for, American wood-warblers.

Count them out ~ Bay-breasted Warbler, Canada Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler, Golden and Blue-winged Warblers and, of course Cape May Warbler. Oh, and one other. Magnolia Warbler.

Magnolia Warbler…..oh my goodness….. its another one of those Skimmer-esque, heart-stopping moments when those two words rocked up on the pager screens on the early evening of Sunday 23rd. Blind panic fails to see just where it is….then….oh no…it’s on Fair Isle…..

….but for those 30 or so birders who’ve endured some trying conditions recently on that most famous birding island, this was surely everything that they could have wished for and, having taken the undoubted risk of heading off-island and spending a fair amount of cash to do so, what they most certainly deserved.

Imagine what was in the mind of Assistant Warden Jason Moss as he headed towards Ler Ness and gazed down in to Copper Geo ~ expectations high perhaps, but not knowing that he was just moments away, one short binocular lift away, from being confronted with something absolutely sensational....that first gasp of incredulity, that first split-second of realisation of what was below him as he stared down the cliff face must have been truly wonderful. What on earth must he have felt when confronted by such a delicious vision of yellow and green, black and white….eyerings, wingbars and tail patches ~ a dazzling Star Spangled vision in the evening light….

The bird was on show for some two hours or so after discovery, seemingly behaving well in the geo before heading to roost just before 7.30. Identity confirmed, photos obtained, it was time to enjoy this marvellous migrant. As the Observatory party started (that would have been some evening I guess, mine’s a Bitter & Twisted), the charter planes were being lined up for Monday morning…

….but, as we know, they stayed put at their respective airfields ~ the Magnolia Warbler was gone to who-knows-where and birders on Fair Isle could start their day’s birding knowing that they were in a rather elite club……

Britain’s only other Magnolia Warbler was discovered by Shane Enright and Alaric Sumner in the pittosporum hedges along Barnaby Lane, on St. Agnes (Scilly) on 27th September 1981 ~ the bird showed throughout the following day but was only seen by some 60 or so birders ~ some of whom did make the trip across on 28th to see the bird before a grumpy local resident took a stick to the bushes.

Many said then, and still do today, that it was one of the best birds they’ve ever seen in the UK and there’s little to suggest that the Fair Isle crowd of 230912 will think any differently…..

….with the two big Scilly birds from the class of ’81 having fallen this year ~ Orphean Warbler and Magnolia Warbler ~ what’s next to break the 30 years plus barrier?

Meanwhile much more of last week's news in the full round-up online including;
Many more stunning photos of the Magnolia Warbler and the twitch
Stats and facts on Swainson's Thrush and Blyth's Pipit
White's Thrush, in-the-hand photo
Musings on the Hoylake peep
Stunning video footage of Ortolan Bunting on Scilly, also of Pec Sand feeding with Buff-breasted Sand in Glos
PLUS a host of other fantastic photos from this week's contributors