WINTER’S WILDLIFE Big surprise with rare flying strays
JACKPOT
Half a million birdwatchers will be focusing on gardens across the land today in the biggest citizen science survey of its kind.
While the RPSB’S Big Garden Birdwatch has been providing precious conservation insights over the past 45 years, the event also highlights how observers can hit the jackpot by finding incredibly rare species on their home patch.
Gardens have a long history of giving sanctuary to waifs from all points of the compass. East often meets West with vagrant American birds and lost Asiatic strays turning up in deepest suburbia, much to the delight of surprised householders and keen twitchers.
Earlier this month, scores of raritychasers descended on Heybridge in Essex, after a lucky birder was greeted by the sight of a northern waterthrush in his garden – only the eighth occasion this North American species of wood-warbler has made it to Britain.
Over subsequent days, the waterthrush, which by rights should have been wintering in mangrove swamps anywhere from Cuba to Colombia, looked right at home, foraging for insects in a nearby drainage ditch. Stragglers from across Atlantic have become enshrined in Big Garden Birdwatch folklore, with an American Robin turning up in Peckham, South London, in 2006, and a myrtle warbler in County Durham in 2014.
On that occasion, a 12-year-old schoolgirl and her younger brother found the insect-eating songbird, famed for its sunshine yellow rump, while counting house sparrows and starlings in their garden. The children’s mother managed to take a photograph of the warbler, which was later identified by the RSPB.
Lingering survivors from last September’s windfall of rare American birds in the wake of Hurricane Lee could still be present to produce a surprise for garden watchers.
There is also a chance of someone stumbling across a bird from Siberia.
Black-throated thrush, common rosefinch and little bunting are all longdistance migrants that should spend their winters in India or South East Asia but have ended up being tallied by Big Garden Birdwatch participants.
For details of today’s event, see rspb.org.uk/birdwatch
Stragglers from across the Atlantic have become enshrined in folklore