Horde lured to village for glimpse of a dusky thrush
HUNDREDS of twitchers flocked yesterday for a peek of one of the rarest birds ever to visit Britain.
The dusky thrush has turned up in the Peak District of Derbyshire, 6,000 miles from its usual wintering grounds in Japan and southern China.
It is only the 13th time the species has been recorded in the UK – though the most recent was spotted this October on the Isles of Scilly.
Birders have come from as far away as Belgium to watch it feeding among redwing and other types of thrush which migrate here every winter from Scandinavia.
British Trust for Ornithology expert Paul Stancliffe, who joined the twitchers in Beeley, Derbyshire, said it was wonderful to see the exotic visitor.
Thrill
Mr Stancliffe, who has spotted 460 different species in the UK, said: “This was a first for me. It is a real thrill to see something new.
“It is a bird from the Far East that lives in Siberia and winters in Japan and China. It shouldn’t really get here, so when it does it’s really exciting.
“This autumn has been very good for unusual birds from the East. In October we had the first ever Siberian accentor, a relative of our dunnock, in the UK. There were 13 of them here.
“They must have been caught up in unusual weather patterns which brought them all the way to Britain.
“This dusky thrush could have been here since the autumn and gone unnoticed. I expect it will stay with the redwings and when they migrate north in the spring it will go with them.” News of the unusual visitor spread after birdwatcher Rachel Jones posted online photographs, asking if anyone knew what it was.
Lee Evans, 56, who travelled from London, said: “It’s a mega, mega bird. It loves apples and berries. Apparently there are 400 people here.”
Tim Melling of the RSPB said: “Rare birds turn up in Britain every year but the dusky thrush is a one-inevery-25-years kind of bird.
“This one is a young bird, so is more prone to getting lost. But why it ended up in Beeley, we will never know.” Twitchers in a flurry yesterday about the rare dusky thrush, left, which found itself in the Peak District instead of its normal winter home in China or Japan