Friday, November 07, 2014

patch Hoopoe

the first rare bird I ever found in Britain was a Hoopoe at Barton on May 29th 1969! -- 30 years later on October 23rd 1999 a phone call from Paul manager of what was then a derelict factory site and is now Waters' Edge CP told me he had seen a Hoopoe there that day while we were gallivanting on the lincs coast looking for rare birds -- it stayed around and I managed to see it on the 24th and again on the 25th and 26th but then it disappeared -- in spite of searching no-one saw it again but on the morning of November 2nd I came across it about 1km away at the northern end of Pasture Wharf, preening in a hawthorn -- when I got a phone call yesterday afternoon saying a Hoopoe had been seen near Waters' Edge I was needless to say keen to be able to look for it on my patch but the story was it flew west and had not been seen again - this morning dawned wet, wet and wetter but there were only two Eiders and 28 Common Scoter on the Humber so I set off walking east to look for the Hoopoe -- nowhere to be found on Waters' Edge so I walked on east in what had become torrential rain musing as I approached Pasture Wharf of the 1999 November sighting when the Hoopoe suddenly sprung up and flew into a clump of hawthorns -- bizarre coincidence or what? 15 years and 5 days since the last bird and within 5m of where i had seen that bird -- although very flighty I managed a few shots of this bird but at one stage it was flushed y walkers on the Humber bank and flew east whereupon it was chased by four Carrion Crows and looked in serious risk of being killed as they joined forces harrying it eastwards for over 2kms then as suddenly as it disappeared it came flying back to the original spot --
a very pale coloured bird but cannot find anything positive on identification of saturata and the race is not even  mentioned in the Status of Birds in Britain and Ireland
























1 comment:

Brett said...

Wonder if this is of the form U.e.saturata? Also the heavy streaking on the belly, I'm wondering if that is significant and whether it is a contributory feature?