Black Kite, Eastern Subalpine Warbler and A1 nerd maps

 


What a week of birding!  It’s been bitty, disjointed, and a bit “grab time when you can” in the rain showers, but lots of special encounters this week.  Seeing some real migration movement in the West of Manchester has been positive, with Common Tern, Grasshopper, Sedge and Reed Warblers, Whinchat, Ring Ouzel, hirundines, a couple of early Whimbrel, and Yellow Wagtail back in reasonable numbers.  On top of this, it’s been a week of connecting with rare birds.  A period in early April felt very barren for me, missing lots of birds I wanted to see, and feeling like migration was just something that happened in other regions of the UK; but this week has been spectacular.

Aside from the Yellow (and Channel!) Wagtail finds on Monday last week, and the mind-blowing lucky find of Bee-eater on Tuesday, there was a beautiful Black Tern on Wednesday.  Before this becomes too much like a Craig David song from the year 2000 (oh, God), I decided to chill on Thursday and Friday, before a Black Kite was found by Tom Lowe in Shropshire, and coincided with me having an unexpected afternoon free on Saturday.  This was a much wanted first in the UK for me – more on this later.  Sunday was Easter and family, but I still squeezed in a check at Burnt Edge (probable Tree Pipit, but couldn’t confirm), and then a Subalpine Warbler species was found at Filey – one of my favourite places in the UK.  The photos (unlike mine) were amazing, and hinted at the bird being an Eastern Subalpine, and that would be two out of the three for some people in the Subalp set following the Western in Lincolnshire earlier this month.  So Monday was a 4am start to (successfully) re-find the Eastern Subalpine Warbler, though I don’t think that lyric would scan or fit the spirit of Craig David’s classic.



Black Kite is a bird I have missed in the UK half a dozen times.  Always just a little late, or, because I see them in Europe when on holiday or visiting family, a bird I’ve sacrificed to see other rare birds with the mental justification that they’ll likely colonise here in the next few years.  However, they’re usually reported in far flung locations like Suffolk, or Kent – places that are realistically slower to get to than any destination in mainland Europe.  This bird was found within 10 miles of my own birthplace; a county that has never produced a lifer for me, but that I love for the classic rolling English/Welsh-border countryside.  Shropshire. 

Being a nerd of almost unplumbed depths, I have an A1 map of Britain and Ireland on my study wall, with every one of the rarest 150(ish) birds I’ve seen pinned in and “detective-board” style strings linking names and dates to locations.  The East coast is (predictably) more full than any other location (and Flamborough/Bempton the most productive site for new birds for me in the whole country with 12 between the twin points of the coastline – twice as many as the Spurn recording area with 6 and the best of the west at Burtonmere with 5), and then the West coast after that (because I live closer to it).  This is my first pin in Shropshire.  In fact, the only more isolated pins I have on the map than this is the one in Hertfordshire where I saw my first UK Hoopoe in 2022, or West Bromwich where I saw my first Grey Phalarope at point blank range on a tiny duck pond. 



This kind of quirk, knowing this about the things that I have seen, makes me feel satisfied in a way I find it hard to explain.  I know it’s dull – I can feel people’s eyes glazing over as I not only bore them about birds (again), I bore them with personally meaningful statistics about birds that are completely meaningless to literally anybody else.  Yet I still get a genuine kick out of placing the pin in the map, seeing the gaps and the spaces and the hotspots form in actual 3D, not an app or a website which would be much, much more useful… but personally meaningful data I see every time I come to my study to work, write, or process photos.  Seeing the Black Kite circling with Red Kites over the most picturesque landfill I’ve ever seen, my primary thrill was the way it angled that bulkier body to take advantage in the air over the slighter Reds.  The secondary thrill was that of my map: Shropshire is now on THE map, deserving of italics and capitalisation – and yes, on a subconscious level I was aware, and satisfied, that I would bore my friends with this even while watching the Kite master the air.


The Eastern Subalpine Warbler was a visceral thrill of a different kind.  Aesthetically, I find it difficult to think of a more pleasing combination of colours than the rich grey, pink, mauve tones on that group of Sylvia warblers, and finding this small, colourful creature in the brightness of the just-budding green of fresh Hawthorn leaves was like finding a tiny dragon complete with traditional moustache; a saturation of colour in one rich warm aspect that stood out in the English scrub at Filey like a ruby in a shallow sea.  The rarity of the bird is one facet of its preciousness; but the actual physical appearance of it makes it a jewel amongst birds for me.  I could have watched it for hours more than the two we stayed to observe, but as ever time and responsibility call.  And yes, the pin went in at Filey, my first one there… though I love this bird so much it might be worth two…

 

 


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