Rarities blow in on ocean storm
Whether or not the American revolutionary Paul Revere rode through the streets to declare “the British are coming” has long been clouded by the fog of history.
One thing’s for certain, however. This autumn the Yanks are mounting an invasion of epic proportions this side of the Atlantic.
Yanks, in this context, are the nicknames twitchers have for the rare American birds that are blown off course during migration and make landfall on our shores.
Most highly prized are those dandies of the bird world, the multi-coloured sprites known across the Pond as wood warblers.
These stateside imposters don’t actually warble and are perched on a different evolutionary branch from true Old World warblers such as blackcaps and chiffchaffs.
That said, American warblers are remarkable creatures. Each autumn, birds heading from Canadian and US forests to winter in the tropical warmth of South America get propelled across the Atlantic by the remnants of powerful hurricanes.
Many perish in raging seas. Lucky individuals – often weighing less than 10 grams – arrive on the numerous islands and outcrops dotted around the British coastline. Some of my most memorable days birding have been spent scouring the welcoming patches of dense vegetation that cover the Isles of Scilly, one of the hotspots where you find these stormblown waifs recovering from their epic journeys.
October has always been the high point of the American rarity season but this year it started two weeks earlier, courtesy of the vestiges of Hurricane Lee.
The powerful cyclone created the perfect ‘fall out’ storm, after hitting Nova Scotia at the height of bird migration and then petering out over the British Isles with an unprecedented cargo of rare wood warblers.
Wales received the cream of the crop, recording Britain’s first Canada warbler, second bay-breasted warbler, third and fourth magnolia warblers as well as a striking black-and-white warbler.
Further north, a Tennessee warbler was found in Scotland’s Western Isles and a Blackburnian warbler turned up in County Kerry, Ireland. The clever money is on a never-before recorded Connecticut warbler touching down sometime this month.