Bird causes a bit of a ‘ rufous’ among dedicated twitchers

NOW AND then a bird from distant shores gets lost on migration and wanders offcourse to the UK.

What usually makes the headlines is not the actual bird, the name of which even most birdwatchers haven’t previously encountered, but the huge number of twitchers it draws from far and wide.

So it was this week, with the arrival on a godforsaken part of the Norfolk coast of a rufous bush chat, whose list of alternate names include rufous scrub robin and rufous warbler.

As word spread on the Rare Bird Alert network via pagers – yes, these are still in use – and phone texts, within hours over 100 telescopes and pairs of binoculars were trained on this six- inch bird with, as its name suggests, some distinctive reddish- brown feathers.

So many, in fact, that the police dispatched seven officers to ensure social distancing guidelines were observed.

The species was last recorded in Britain in 1980 and should really be in tropical Africa.

But it wasn’t the only bird to go awol, as Yorkshire birdwatchers recently found with an appearance by the rather more extravagantly plumaged hoopoe at a number of locations, including Nether Poppleton, near York, and Collingham outside Leeds.

Needless to say, pagers and mobile phones soon buzzed with the news, and the hoopoe, with its stunning feathered headdress, had more lenses aimed at it than an A- list celebrity on a red carpet. It wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in Spain, where I’ve seen the bird on most visits.

I’m not a twitcher but know a few who are.

Twitchers collect bird sightings like others collect stamps. But while a rare Penny Red can cost £ 500 at auction, a twitcher can spend much more than that in travel costs in a few days, dashing to the Scilly Isles in the hope of seeing a cedar waxwing then turning round and heading to Fair Isle between the Orkneys and Shetlands to catch a glimpse of a black- throated thrush.

I know of one Yorkshire twitcher whose hobby also cost him his marriage.

Their raison d’être is to see as many different species as possible and compile lists of their observations. Some narrow their list down to the county in which they live but most keep “life” lists of every bird they have seen in Britain, Europe and the world. It’s usual to also maintain separate lists of all birds seen each year.

Twitchers hope to qualify for membership of the exclusive UK400 Club, open to those who’ve seen 400 species in Britain and Ireland, but a handful have notched up well over 500 birds. One of those who has lives in a caravan on the Yorkshire coast.

The twitching world is now so competitive that some of them keep rare sightings among themselves, thus denying others the chance of a tick.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case when an American robin turned up next to the LeedsLiverpool Canal at Bingley a few years back and, in the company of about 200 others, I got a chance to see it.