Rose-tinted trio
No fewer than three Rose-breasted Grosbeaks were found in Britain and Ireland during a period of westerly winds in late September and early October.
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks: Co Cork, Scilly and Shetland, September and October 2021
AN impressive three Rosebreasted Grosbeaks were seen in late September and early October, marking the most fruitful autumn run of records of this striking Nearctic vagrant in Britain and Ireland since the heady days of the 1980s.
The first of these was found by David Cooper at Norwick, Unst, where it favoured the garden at Valyie on the morning of 25th. A first-winter male, identified as such by the rose-red underwing coverts, it was present for a day before moving on. A third for the archipelago and only the second to be seen alive, it follows a spring record – a secondcalendar-year male at West Burra on 3-4 May 2016 – and further demonstrates the potential of the isles to produce North American passerines.
Five days later, John Bowler’s famous garden on Tiree, Argyll, struck once more. Following a quick-moving transatlantic depression and associated warm front passing through the Hebrides in the early hours of 30th, a first-winter male grosbeak appeared at Balephuil, being first glimpsed from John’s bedroom window shortly after first light. Acting in the manner of a newly arrived bird, it was extremely mobile and seen only a couple of times in the hours after discovery, and then not again past lunchtime.
Completing the hat-trick, and getting Ireland on the scoreboard, was a first-winter female (with yellow, not red, underwing coverts) discovered by Paul
Moore on Cape Clear, Co Cork, on 7th. Lingering to at least 9th, this is the fifth grosbeak to be recorded on ‘Cape’, following birds in 1962, 1979, 1983 and 1987 – quite a gap, then, since the last there. That said, it was as recently as 2016 that the species was last recorded in Co Cork (and Ireland), when a bird spent no fewer than 12 days at Garinish from 29 September. ■