Rare Bird Alert weekly round-up: 31 October - 06 November 2012

b>The week's highlights:
Galway’s Belted Kingfisher reappears at the start of the week
Fair Isle’s lingering Siberian Rubythroat breaks a record or two…
....as does the Kilminning Eastern Olivaceous Warbler
Spanish Sparrow has a ticket to Ryde…(almost) on the Isle of Wight
County Clare holds on to the Pied-billed Grebe
The juvenile female Northern Harrier in Wexford stays in to a new month
….and who knows what to make of the Sussex Hooded Merganser ….

With barely a tick-tock on the November clock, the first couple or three days of the new month saw two to three inches of snow fall in the Westcountry and it was “match postponed” elsewhere as a weekend of heavy rain in some parts of the south and east took their toll.

Elsewhere, it was calm, it was windy, it was mild and it was frosty ~ yes, a typical early, early winter mixed bag of weather.

…and with a mixed bag of weather comes a mixed bag of birds ~ some would perhaps gently suggest that this week actually wasn’t up to much, that the autumn was over. Hmmmm.

…one look at the list of birds making the news would make many beg to differ with the overtly negative vibe and although brand new megas were thin on the ground, there was a whole heap of stuff to keep most folk content and happy with their birding lot.

Headline birds
Where to start? Well, let’s kick off with the reappearance of one of the most glitzy star turns of the autumn. Although not the rarest of the big birds of autumn 2012 (it is definitely no Sakhalin Leaf Warbler or Chestnut-eared Bunting), there is no doubting the enduring quality and accompanying excitement, that still surrounds the news when Belted Kingfisher is mentioned….

On October’s final day, a Belted Kingfisher was seen perched on wires near a tidal outflow just south of Clifden (Co. Galway). There seems little doubt that this bird will be the male that arrived in the same spurt of Atlantic weather that seemingly littered bits of Galway with ultra-rares (including, of course, the Western Palearctic’s first ever Eastern Kingbird) towards the end of the first week of October.

How has it gone missing for so long, despite only moving some ten miles or so? Well, those who know the area of Connemara that Clifden sits within know only too well just how tricky it is to search for birds, even one as conspicuous as a Belted Kingfisher (that said, despite being big and blue and sounding like a football rattle they can be as unobtrusive as you like) could easily go missing for weeks in the bays and mini-peninsulas that make up this magical part of Ireland….

It may well be another three weeks, maybe more, before the Belted Kingfisher reappears, but it is odds on that it will turn up again. And if it does, Galway will be where it’s at….

Another of the autumn’s supporting cast of outstanding rarities, the female Siberian Rubythroat on Fair Isle, continued to be seen for much of the week (albeit still remaining rather elusive) still present on 3rd, a date that saw it become the equal longest staying Rubythroat ever (coming up alongside the 12 day stay of the Gulberwick male of October 2011) and the Fair Isle bird also headed in to the record books by virtue of being the first ever Siberian Rubythroat to be seen in Britain in November (the other eight Rubythroats have all been October only birds, seen between 5th to 30th).

...and talking of record breakers, Fife’s long-staying Eastern Olivaceous Warbler at Kilminning this week became the longest staying EOW ever....still present on 6th, the bird has clocked up 24 days on site now, easing ahead of the former record holder, the Cape Clear Island bird of September and October 1999 ~ that one clocked up 22 days....

Meanwhile much more of last week's news in the full round-up online including;
Spanish Sparrow on the Isle of Wight
Pied-billed Grebe remains in County Mayo
Northern Harrier still in County Wexford
Hooded Merganser in Sussex
Videos of Bee-eater at Seaburn, Hoopoe in Somerset, Great Grey Shrike in Staffordshire and some confiding Waxwings in Shetland
Plus much more...