Wildlife

James Lowen

The bird largely skulked in the tiniest of birches, often remaining stock still at the bottom for minutes at a time - and otherwise often moving behind a shroud of yellow-green leaves. Occasionally it would venture into the open, normally feeding quickly, but sometimes allowing some nice images to be taken.

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7 October 2024 Just deserts

I am well behind on blogs, with some nice stuff to report as soon as I can make time. Last Saturday, David Bradnum and I were wandering along a Yorkshire cliff path, discussing what birds the imminent set of birds were likely to produce. One bird name checked was Asian Desert Warbler, a species that David still needed. This delectable waif was a regular feature of twitches during 1991-93 (i.e., when I properly started twitching) but then did pretty much a 30-year bunk, with just a recent spring bird on Holy Island to please those who had started listing this Millennium. As such, an autumn individual, we mused, was long overdue.

And a final shot (yes, I know the bill tip is hidden) just to show three features that confirm the bird as Asian rather than the now-split African: contrast between mantle and rump, extensive dark wedges on the tail feathers and a dark shaft streak on the rufous tertials. Lovely bird.

Fast-forward eight days, and the early-morning WhatsApp message from Stuart White was greatly appreciated: Asian Desert Warbler, Winterton. Guessing that David might still be asleep, I rang him and shared the news. "I'm getting up as we speak," he said. And I drove on to Suffolk, where I was working that morning. Come the afternoon, though, I had to drop my daughter in Wroxham, which was sufficiently close to Winterton to make going there a no-brainer. And what a lovely bird it was too.

I have a similarly fond memory about seeing Norfolk's first Desert Warbler, found by Mark Golley on Blakeney Point two summers later. David Candy and I had joined Chris Collins for a ridiculous unlucky bank holiday weekend of twitching, during which time we didn't even make it for a Great Reed Warbler in Kent on the Friday night (we got stuck on the M25 and had to turn round), then drove down to Cornwall to dip Black-headed Bunting, then returned via Dungeness to dip Sardinian Warbler and then elmley to properly dip Great Reed Warbler. The following morning we returned to Dunge to again dip Sardinian Warbler, and ended up having breakfast in the cafe there. Paul Chapman was on another table and his pager went off: "Pacific Swift at Cley!" he hollered. One of his crew complained that their breakfast hadn't yet arrived. "I'll buy everyone breakfasts once we've seen the swift!" Mark retorted. And so we all sped north as fast as a Nissan Micra would take us. Once the swift was bagged, we headed west along Blakeney Point to enjoy Mark's singing Dessie. A brilliant end to an otherwise dreadful weekend.

Asian Desert Warbler is a resonant species for me. Towards the end of my student freshers' disco in October 1991, I saw the vaguely familiar faces of two student birders hove into my blurred view. They were, I realised, Tom Brooks and Paula Salmon. They were gesticulating for me to follow them outside. I did so, where they told me that there was "a Desert Warbler on your patch, James" (as a teenager, I regularly birded Flamborough Head, though I wouldn't quite have called it my patch). There was a car going, they said, but it was full. Nevertheless, the driver, Mark Telfer, was happy to drop me at the edge of the city, if I fancied hitching. Being pissed up and full of FOMO long before the acronym had been invented, I agreed. Two lifts got me to Peterborough. There I chanced upon two Suffolk twitter,s Eric Patrick and John someone, who were en route to Flamborough. When Telf's car reached South landing car park, I was already there, prompting astonishment and admiration in similar measure.