East Anglia Holiday - Day 7
So back to Sizewell again looking for Black Redstart, again without success. We did however find a very interesting bird. It is clearly a wagtail and equally clearly not a Pied Wagtail (body shape, tail length, markings and colour scheme), nor is it a Yellow or a Grey Wagtail (no yellow anywhere!). In fact the only bird in my bird guide (Collins Bird Guide) it could be is a Citrine Wagtail 1st Winter. The sighting was corroborated by a couple we met who do volunteer work at the nearby Minsmere reserve and who contacted the County Bird recorder with the sighting. We took our time eliminating all the other possibilities, checking and rechecking and trained the scope on it to confirm details. So here are the first two snaps of the Citrine Wagtail:
If this truly is a Citrine Wagtail and I believe it is, it's a long long way from home. We then headed back to the car park ready to head on to RSPB North Warren when we spotted a pair of these birds, here's a snap of one bird showing clearly from this pair (and they were a pair as they moved together):
The only other explanation in my view is a cross breed between a Citrine and a Pied or Grey Wagtail but I believe this is even more unlikely. In amongst all the excitement of the Citrine Wagtail, I also snapped this Skylark flying past:
With the scope we checked out nearer of the two platforms above the hot water outlets from Sizewell and I am certain there were breeding Kittiwake including one nest with two youngsters in, which is further south than Lowestoft and much further south than Yorkshire!
North Warren was very quiet (http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/n/northwarren/index.asp), we didn't see any of the Woodlark and got bitten to death on one of the paths but it made for a good walk. We did see this Whitethroat displaying near a visitors bench:
A seven mile day.
If this truly is a Citrine Wagtail and I believe it is, it's a long long way from home. We then headed back to the car park ready to head on to RSPB North Warren when we spotted a pair of these birds, here's a snap of one bird showing clearly from this pair (and they were a pair as they moved together):
The only other explanation in my view is a cross breed between a Citrine and a Pied or Grey Wagtail but I believe this is even more unlikely. In amongst all the excitement of the Citrine Wagtail, I also snapped this Skylark flying past:
With the scope we checked out nearer of the two platforms above the hot water outlets from Sizewell and I am certain there were breeding Kittiwake including one nest with two youngsters in, which is further south than Lowestoft and much further south than Yorkshire!
North Warren was very quiet (http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/n/northwarren/index.asp), we didn't see any of the Woodlark and got bitten to death on one of the paths but it made for a good walk. We did see this Whitethroat displaying near a visitors bench:
A seven mile day.
posted by Michael at 4:11 pm
4 Comments:
Nice pictures. especially the bird in flight.
patt - thank you :)
I think the volunteers were being polite...
David, i think they genuinely believed they same as we did at the time, as they contacted the county bird recorded. We since examined the pictures more closely and it's (now) obvious they are juvenile Pied Wagtails. There's a few more howlers in the blog, all part of our learning, which remains very much work in progress :)
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