Weedon’s World
In early October, Mike was invited to come and see one of the rarest birds ever seen in the Peterborough area, in a monsoon!
Mike extols the virtue of birding on his doorstep (once again)
Cambridgeshire is a county which, despite being inland, is blessed with some of the best birders around, living and birding within its confines. It is also the county which makes up the majority of my beloved Peterborough area (we also include a bit of south Lincolnshire, a soupçon of Rutland and a wee portion of Northants). And Peterborough has a decent handful of fine birders, too.
One of these, at the weekend (the first Saturday of October), reported a Yellow-browed Warbler in his garden! These Siberian ‘sprites’ are highly prized in these here parts, and are pretty rare across Cambs. I have seen three, so spent a few hours on Sunday, trawling the pathways and cut-throughs near where the little warbler had been seen, but to no avail.
Not long after lunch, I settled down to sleep off my morning efforts. I was rudely awakened at 2ish by a caller who doesn’t normally call me unless there is something special afoot. Jonathan Taylor (now site manager at the RSPB’s Ouse Washes, and formerly a warden at the RSPB’s Nene Washes for decades) fits into the category of being one of the best birders around. Although he lives in Glinton, in the northern half of the Peterborough area, he is not one to cross the county line into Lincolnshire, preferring to do his birding (and sometimes year listing) strictly within Cambs. And, boy, has he found some exciting birds in the county.
Indeed, prior to Sunday, he had found at least three county ‘firsts’, two of which are extremely rare inland birds. These were Isabelline Shrike (2000), Gull-billed Tern (2015) and Isabelline Wheatear (2016).
His Sunday phonecall went something like “Hi, Mike, I am up at Peakirk, and believe I have just found a Radde’s Warbler…” The rest is a blur. Yellow-browed Warblers are rare enough visitors from Siberia, but Radde’s Warbler is a whole different ball game. Sure, they are no longer considered ‘BB’ rarities, and have become almost regular at certain sites on the coast, but the warbler JT was claiming to have found was more than 24 miles from anything that could be called coastal! Simply outrageous and, naturally, a first for Cambridgeshire.
I got my stuff together as I called my friend Will Bowell (who lives much closer to Peakirk than me), and before I could breathe, I had joined Jonathan, Will and Will’s dad Ray in the Great Radde’s Refinding Expedition. The weather varied from nasty to grim, with rain. The hedges where ‘it’ was hiding were dense, and who knows if the bird had gone for ever, having been seen being chased by a Robin. The slog was hard, and Will and Ray eventually dragged themselves home.
JT and I struggled on until the sun set, and we decided to call it a day, disgruntled. We gave up. And like with all good Zen moments, that is when the Radde’s Warbler called! It is a bird I had never heard in real life before, but I knew it, instantly. But it was dark.
It was still dark on Monday morning when I returned. By 8 o’clock, the Radde’s was announcing that it had survived the night. By 9 o’clock it called no more, that morning. I was back in the evening to hear that a few of Cambs’ top listers had seen the bird at 4pm. There was a gathering of ‘names’, blokes whose county lists were around the 300 bird mark, all dripping with rain, hoping for a glimpse of the most elusive of birds. And then I saw a Radde’s-shaped warbler creeping through a gap in a bramble, and excitement grew.
A minute or so later, there it was in full view for what must have been a few seconds. Ecstasy! Apart from one or two of the crowd hadn’t seen it. But another Cambs bird legend separated from the pack and refound it, gently beckoning the rest to witness the rarest bird in Cambridgeshire, in the open.
This morning, it was Will Bowell’s birthday. At just before 8am, the birthday boy drove along ‘Radde’s Drive’ just as we early-keenies had full visuals on the celebrity warbler. I signalled for Will to get his camera (my battery was flat!), and he duly delivered the photo you see above. Will later stated that he thought that somehow the warbler knew it was his birthday.
But really, this special present was delivered courtesy of the bird-finding genius of Jonathan Taylor, who just happened to park on a random road, right next to where Cambridgeshire’s only ever Radde’s Warbler, perched on the top of a bramble, was in full view.
WILL STATED THAT HE THOUGHT THE WARBLER KNEW IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY
Mike Weedon is a lover of all wildlife, a local bird ‘year lister’, and a keen photographer, around his home city of Peterborough, where he lives with his wife, Jo, and children, Jasmine and Eddie. You can see his photos at weedworld. blogspot.com