This is what birdwatching is all about, that search, and eventual sighting of that rare and elusive bird, the one that is so unobtainable that when that it does turn up everyone flocks from the entire corners of the country to see. So it was with the BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER on the Scillies, an extremely rare bird to the UK, a massive mega, and to boot one that was beautifully plumaged as well. I don't know how many twitches I have been to where the only glimpses of the bird I get are of that little brown job, which looks just like another similar looking brown job.
The day started off innocuously with a visit to the island of St Agnes. "Aggie" is a pretty little island, flat and sparsely populated. It was a land of rough grassland, scattered bushes, with some tended fields, and with little coves and beaches on the shoreline. On the boulders, there were plenty of ROCK PIPITS, and a sizable flock of RINGED PLOVERS was also seen. Some WILLOW WARBLERS were in the bushes, and a GREY WAGTAIL was found on the coast line. A lonely DUNLIN was the only one in the whole island chain. St Agnes is famous for its amazing ice cream from the dairy there, and no visit to the island would be complete without tasting a cone.
As we were on the island the news came in of the sighting of a BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER on the island of Bryher, and of course we had to go see it. That meant leaving St Agnes for Hugh Town on St Mary's, and getting a boat to Bryher where it was found. Bryher is next to Tresco so wasn't too far away. On the way to the docks out of St Agnes we paid a brief visit to a twitch of a raddes warbler but didn't see it so moved on to get the boat back to St Mary's.
So it was we got off the St Agnes boat and onto the Bryher one, specially commissioned for the twitch. Of course it was busy, as every birder from the entire island chain had boarded it, and it was jammed full. Bryher wasn't far away, and then it was a quick dash to the bird. Never having been to Bryher before, it was a case of follow the leader, just walking after the person in front, who was probably following the person in front of him. The bird was located on the back side of the island to where we landed, so it was a fair slog to finally get there. Bryher is a lot less civilised than the other islands and is mainly large areas of rough grassland.
And so we got to the twitch, and there was a large group of people standing in a small grassy field surrounded by tall hedges. The general consensus was that the bird had been seen but not for a while. Then a murmur broke out and people moved, and bins and cameras were raised. Looking up to a part of the hedge, there was movement, and, yes, a brief glimpse of the bird.
The BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER is a very pretty bird, yellow front with a grey back and beige underparts, with some heavy grey streaking. Coming from America its a very rare bird here, this being the fifth record, and the first for England, its only ever been seen on islands.
The next sighting, the bird flew into the air like a flycatcher, to grab a passing insect but missed it. I moved to the other side of the hedge, to a different field and there got better views. I saw the bird many times, and although the bird wasn't too showy, I had plenty of views. The bird mainly stayed in the tops of the trees, constantly moving around. In the back field where I was twenty people were present, in the field where I was first, three hundred. That's all the birders on the Scillies. It would be a while before people were able to arrive from the mainland.
So for once in my life I attended a twitch where I was able to get good views of a small bird. This is the reason why I decided to come to the Scillies, for that rare enticing bird, that extreme mega. This is the sort of bird that most birdwatchers dream about, a once in a life time occurrence, the stuff stories are made of. Who knows when the bird will turn up in our country again, but I now have it ticked off on my life list and I'm very happy.
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