The Big One...

One of the few upsides of lockdown has been the chance to look out over the garden whilst working. I haven’t seen much to be honest (although the first village Marsh Harrier since the war was a bonus last autumn) but that all changed on Wednesday.

The cold weather and putting out food had brought really good numbers of birds to the garden. At the back of the crab apple tree I noticed one small, active bird which then hopped into sight. It was an obvious phylloscopus warbler but unlike the occasional wintering Chiffchaffs we get in the garden this was a noticeably dark, drab brown bird. There was no sign of green or yellow and then I saw the head pattern: A striking well-defined whitish supercilium, emphasised by a dark line through the eye,  ****! DUSKY WARBLER!!

This was all with the naked eye but I had binoculars close at hand and was able to confirm the ID including seeing the shortish wings (which the bird flicked regularly), pinkish brown legs and a relatively fine Chiffchaff like bill. It was also noticeable that the pale throat and upper chest contrasted quite strongly with the rest of the underparts (in fact this was what I first noticed about the bird when it was partly obscured) but I don’t recall hearing this as a particular feature of Dusky.

The only frustration, and a major one, was when I returned from fetching my camera there was no sign of the bird and despite searching in potential areas over the subsequent days no further sightings.  

This will be the first record for North-west Yorkshire and, unsurprisingly, easily the best bird I have seen in the village in more than thirty years of watching.   

Otherwise it has been a quiet week. A walk along the river yesterday produced two Buzzard, five Snipe, three Oystercatchers and a Redshank...

A Sparrowhawk was hunkered down on the riverbank and there were at least four Cormorants including this one which, unusually, didn’t immediately fly away when it saw me…

And as there was so little to photograph this week I’ll finish with this winter-lit Wren from the garden…