Surprise sights are a rare treat
The arrival of the rarities edition of British Birds journal brings the same glee as the Beano popping through my letterbox when I was a youngster.
The annual publication highlights just how much has changed over the decades with the way twitchers receive news about rare birds turning up on our shores.
Nowadays, almost as soon as a North American rose-breasted grosbeak or an Asiatic long-toed stint touches down, the rare bird information tom-toms go into mega-mode with thousands of alerts sent out to twitchers’ mobile phones and pagers.
Back in less technological times, browsing the annual report of the British Birds Rarities Committee every autumn was often the first time most birdwatchers became aware of records of many a near-mythical species.
Pawing my way through the committee’s 58-page report for 2020, published in this month’s British Birds, has provided much insight into how the birding community still found time and energy to make incredible discoveries during the Covid pandemic.
Almost every page of the BBRC’S 63rd annual report contains thrilling accounts of birds whose epic journeys brought them from all points of the compass.
Among the headlines are a number of both historic and recent seabird sightings from the tropics and sub-antarctica, including the first records of giant petrel, white-chinned petrel, south polar skua and brown booby.
Seabirds are designed for long-distance flights, yet songbirds weighing a few grams can also make epic journeys when caught up in seasonal weather movements.
Without a doubt, the most surprising accounts were two diminutive North American additions to the official list of British birds, which now stands at 627 species. A large contingent of mainland twitchers were quick to descend on the Hebridean island of Tiree in the wake of the discovery of a yellow-bellied flycatcher in September 2020.
Two months later, an even more surprising find was a six-gram, ruby-crowned kinglet – a distant relative of our native and smallest bird, the goldcrest – which turned up on Barra in the Outer Hebrides.
Birding community still made incredible discoveries during Covid