New rush to see a varied thrush

It’s ironic that twitchers are scrabbling for words to describe the joy of seeing a bird that was last spotted in the UK when Countdown first arrived on our TV screens.

Many an adjective and a fair few expletives have been floating in the air after the most unexpected birding event of the 1980s was reprised on a remote Scottish island recently.

At first, the sighting of a beautiful varied thrush in autumnal shades of copper and conker brown left the nation’s birdwatchers speechless.

Indeed, the original finder simply tweeted “no words” to describe the news of the bird’s arrival on the remote island of Papa Westray in the Orkneys.

Since then, a procession of twitchers have been raving about a bird that, by rights, should be foraging in the leaf litter of a dank Californian coastal forest rather than pulling worms from one of the most treeless landscapes in the British Isles.

Jon Dunn, from Rare Bird Alert, whose regular updates have guided an army of birdwatchers to the place where the thrush was spotted, waxed lyrical about the discovery in his weekly news bulletin.

“Achingly rare, stunningly beautiful, at times delightfully confiding, and above all, obligingly settled,” he wrote.

“There will be words spoken and written about this bird for years to come. “Hyperbole? Nope. Just look at that thing.” It was in November 1982, as Richard Whiteley was unveiling the enduring word play quiz show on Channel 4, that the first varied thrush was found near Land’s End in Cornwall.

After that, it was placed on the official British List of bird records, however another 39 years would pass before the next call went out.

This time, it saw a new generation of twitchers setting off by land, sea and air to pay homage to the bird, knowing full well that the Countdown clock will run and run before the next one turns up.

It’s been 39 years since we last saw one, near Land’s End