Rufous-tailed Robin, Radde's Warbler, Isabelline Wheatear and Red-tailed Shrike: a good day in East Yorkshire

It's so tempting to scroll through RBA or BirdGuides seeing rare bird after rare bird appear on your feed in places like Spurn and Flamborough, and imagine that birders are simply walking around the headland tripping over exotics like they're easy and obvious.  The truth is that seeing rare birds is almost never like that.  It makes sense if you think about it.  It's why not every birder finds any rare birds: it takes a special skill set and requires a large amount of effort.  Even after someone has found a rare bird, say, in the gully at Whale Bridge, South Landing, it's not always a given that you'll see it.  This too requires a skill set and effort.  You have to time it right, plan your trip and then focus on the habitat intently, not distracted by other people or your phone.  You need to know what you're looking for and you'd do well to listen to more experienced birders in your orbit.  You also need a slice of luck... the difference between a mega day and a difficult dip are in the little details.

Twitches like the one at South Landing yesterday are not my scene at all.  It's a balancing act between wanting to see and experience those extreme rarities and not wanting to stand in a surging crowd of ridiculously panicky men (usually men behaving like this) who believe they're entitled to be a bit rude and pushy because they're desperate to see a new bird.  All that having been said, the Rufous-tailed Robin was a beautiful little bird in a difficult setting and I was very lucky to be standing beside the person who first picked it up on the morning.  I had 15 seconds of gloriously unrestricted views as it perched first under and then on a log deep in the gully, and then dashed over open ground before being chased off by a more familiar Robin.  This pattern basically repeated for half an hour (though I sacrificed my place after a few minutes so someone shorter could see) with the Siberian visitor always skulking and difficult to see.  Some angles into the gully didn't allow sight of the Robin, and those who weren't there early enough to claim prime territory missed the bird a dozen times as it frustratingly dipped back into dense cover over and over.  For those of us who did see it, that orange tail was simultaneously like and not like that of a Redstart.  Like because the burst of colour on rump and tail on a chat-like bird matches Redstart very well; not like because the colour was a vivid orange rustiness rather than the deeper red-orange of a Redstart.  In the deep gloom of the young day under the trees at Whale Bridge that orange was sometimes all you could see of the bird: a warmth that seemed to glow in the green and grey cathedral around it, with the onlooking crowd venerating this visitor sporting a halo around the tail.

The bigger twitching crowds not being something I enjoy, we watched for as long as I could stand being jostled and bear the whispered passive aggressive comments of a crowd telling each other off for various minor infractions.  With other birds to find and a band of rain setting in, Owen and I made our way to Thornwick Bay to seek a second lifer of the day, leaving Lee and Muhummed and Nas in the crowd to wait their turn.  They had been standing a couple of feet to my right and that simple distance was enough to effectively block them from viewing the Rufous-tailed Robin at all, even when I was seeing it out in the open from 2 feet further left.  I'd been incredibly lucky and could now leave the busy-ness of South Landing with the hope of a Radde's Warbler in mind.

The little stand of trees behind the adventure barn at Thornwick is an incredibly productive area of cover for rare birds.  Nothing special in itself, it is simply the closest dense stand of mixed woodland to the sea on the north of Flamborough Head and therefore a refuge for exhausted small birds that have made it over the water.  Even just as a visitor I've seen Olive-backed Pipit and Greenish Warbler here in the last couple of years, and local birders pick up many scarce birds in those trees each autumn.  However, as with the Rufous-tailed Robin, it's not always easy to pin down these birds.  Those people seeing reports of Radde's Warbler at Thornwick and then seeing the excellent photos of a small number of very talented local birders can be forgiven for thinking they'll rock up to a bit of scrub and see the Radde's immediately in the head height branches of young sycamore.  The reality is that a tired bird in an unfamiliar environment has spent the last 24 hours trying to feed up to recover for migration while being constantly chased by local birds which seem not to enjoy the company of scarce migrants.  That, and it's been aware of a constant stream of people moving back and forth on the edge of the foliage line where it has taken refuge.  Seeing the Radde's Warbler properly in that context required a couple of hours of searching.  Initially seeing the bird very quickly but very poorly, I wanted to have more than a snatched second of prominent eyestripe as my only knowledge of this bird.  Two hours of slowly establishing what was in the woodland helped me to pick out the Radde's as it was chased about by a local Robin and one of a pair of vocal but elusive Yellow-browed Warblers and eventually the small crowd there all saw the bird.  Incidentally, it's no surprise that the Radde's showed well immediately after a pair of birders who had not stopped talking loudly for 90 minutes left the vicinity: birding can be a social hobby, but stepping away from the area where a rare bird is hiding to have your loud conversation (complaining about visiting birders in this instance) is just basic consideration of the welfare of the bird and the experience of other birders.

Brambling fresh in-off, Firecrest, a stream of Chiffchaffs and Robins made up the excellent supporting cast to the Radde's, and a flock of White-fronted Geese flew over.  We made the decision to head to Bempton Cliffs in sudden sunshine to try and see a Pallas's Warbler.  Lee joined us having given the Rufous-tailed Robin three hours and not managed to see it.  We failed to connect with the Pallas's, but it was hardly surprising - the crowds of people standing next to the copse of trees where it had been perched were having loud conversations and were a serious distraction.  At the centre of the crowd was one of the men who had been droning on at Thornwick earlier, and I decided that I wasn't patient enough to wait for hours until he shut up or buggered off and I could see any birds.  I made the executive decision that I was going to try and see the Isabelline Wheatear at Saltend, Paull.  Lee opted to try for the Radde's.  Muhummed messaged to say they still hadn't seen the Rufous-tailed Robin but were being patient.

An hour later Owen and I made our way up the flood defence wall at Saltend and were immediately surprised by how many passerines there were.  A swirling cloud of Meadow Pipits on the rocks with the backdrop of flocks of feeding Dunlins, Curlews and other wading birds was a surprise: no wonder a rare passerine had been seen in this environment.  Three Black Redstarts teased us on the rocks, never staying put long enough for a good photo, and I picked out a fleeting Water Pipit amongst the Meadow and Rock Pipits.  We walked on along the sea wall for a couple of hundred metres behind local dog walkers, and I slowly cottoned on to a birder waving his arms and pointing towards us and down.  We were about to flush the Isabelline Wheatear which was only 30 metres in front of us in the middle of the grassy path!  This friendly and excellent local birder told us about the birds he had seen recently on his patch, and he kindly scrambled down the flood wall slope so as not to flush the Wheatear on his way home as we took our fill of photographs.  For the next hour we watched as dog walkers blundered obliviously through the area the Wheatear was feeding and flushed it in wide circles across a couple of hundred metres of path.  Such a pale and beautiful bird to observe, this was my favourite bird of the day to watch: no crowds, no snatched canopy or scrub obscured views, no loud-mouth expert blarting on to disturb the bird.  Just a stunning and confiding Wheatear in a strangely evocative setting.  

Muhummed still hadn't seen the Robin and was into his 6th hour of waiting patiently.  Lee messaged to say that he had dipped the Radde's and was aiming for the Wheatear.  As he said, a difference of timing of 10 minutes, of standing 6 feet to the unlucky side of a twitch, of taking your attention off the habitat for the wrong 5 seconds was the simple difference between a mega day like I was having or an incredibly disappointing one like he was in the middle of.  Those people looking at Bird Guides from home or work and wistfully assuming that everyone was seeing everything might not realise how hard it can be to connect with rare birds in big habitats.  Thankfully, an hour later Lee deservedly caught up with Isabelline Wheatear as a stunning lifer and went on to see the Isabelline/Red-tailed Shrike and a Hume's Warbler, both of which were also new for him.  Day rescued!

With weather closing in and a deadline to be home, we risked a half hour drive to see a Red-tailed or Isabelline Shrike.  I love these birds, having seen adults of each type and juveniles that sit in a weird complex of identification issues.  They're confiding and easy to watch once they've been found - and credit to whoever found this on a hedge off a sharp bend in the road at Holmpton.  I often wonder who's looking in these places!  I don't pretend to fully understand the DNA/species split issues that make it necessary for me to continue writing "Red-tailed/Isabelline Shrike" every time I refer to it.  I just know that I'm unlikely to be able to ever narrow this down to a single species out of what seems to be a mess of confusing names, overlapping plumages, virtually identical DNA, and species splits that seem to be less than helpful.  As Wittgenstein said in a very different context, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should not speak."  The bird seemed lightly barred below which is generally true of Isabelline, but had a very red tail in some lights which is more true of Red-tailed.  As far as I'm concerned you can pick which you want it to be - this rare shrike was a charismatic bird performing well in the rain, mobbed constantly by a pair of Blue Tits and the important part was seeing the bird, not a convoluted and complicated conversation about whether or not it counted as a tick for someone's list. 

Muhummed messaged to say they'd had excellent views of the Rufous-tailed Robin - a brilliant outcome and reward for 8 hours of persistence.  The difference in our days from the same starting point was illustrative of that bit of luck: if we'd have been stood the other way around with him on my left it would have been me waiting for 8 hours to see the Robin.

This was east coast birding at its peak, and these days in October are a fantastic experience of the wildlife that autumn can serve, but it's easy to be discouraged if the day doesn't go your way.  I was lucky to see every target bird bar Pallas's Warbler on a brilliant day of varied birding, but it's credit to Lee and Muhummed that they persisted in different ways and saw great birds even after a difficult and disappointing start.

After such success I probably shouldn't be feeling pangs of wistfulness as I sit and watch reports of a male Siberian Rubythroat coming in from Spurn, but this is the infliction of the seeker of rare birds. Perhaps it's fitting that my subscription to BirdGuides ran out today; at least I won't have a hundred notifications of all the rare birds everyone is seeing in the same place I was yesterday.