Monday, October 12, 2020

Responsible Birding Diary: Sunday 4.10.20

 

Today was a strange one. I started as usual, attempting to record vis mig birds. But, it wasn’t long, after a lovely quiet start (with hardly a peep out of the distant traffic), that the park filled up with marathon runners and swim-run athletes and their entourages. So, I made my excuses and cycled round the passages and pathways of Orton Wistow, fruitlessly attempting to relocate yesterday’s Yellow-browed Warbler. It had been with a Long-tailed Tit flock, and I found a whopper, but containing no warblers, as far as I could tell.

On my cycle home, I found another Long-tailed Tit flock which did contain a couple of warblers: Chiffchaff and Blackcap. I went home for a snooze and was woken by a call from my friend Jonathan Taylor. Unbelievably, he had just found a Radde’s Warbler at Peakirk (at a site only a couple of hundred metres from my regular haunt of Deeping Lakes) and wanted back-up. This is a Siberian warbler which had never been seen in Cambridgeshire!

I arrived as quickly as possible, and after much searching in the rain and misery for several hours, we decided to call it a day at sunset. Just as we were giving up, the Radde’s Warbler called. And that was that…

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