You have to admire my attempt to be funny? Sunday saw me going for an afternoon visit to Holy Island after news broke mid morning of a Subalpine Warbler, I got two texts. One from BirdGuides and 1 from Steve Evans, nearly both at the same time! So after I had spent the morning in Church I headed off for the 1 hour 30 min drive up to Holy Island picking up a mate on the way. We were about 20 mins of arriving and my mate hadn't received anything on his pager about the Warbler since the initial report and then thankfully news broke it was still present and showing well, also news had broke it was a Western Subalpine Warbler rather than the rarer Eastern form. We arrived, parked up, and then a nice quick paced walk to the location. On arrival we were told it was frequenting a bush right in front of where the people had massed. After a few anxious minutes a bird flew in high from the east and landed in the bush. It was indeed the Subalpine Warbler that had flown into the bush in front of us. We didn't have to wait long until we enjoyed fairly prolonged views of the bird as it showed well feeding up on local insects it seemed to be taking a lot of spiders to me. It flew off but came back after about 30 minutes and we again enjoyed great views and then left happy. What a bird! What a twitch! I love Holy Island, something special about leaving the mainland to go a migrant hotspot to catch up with such a rare bird.
Photos of the bird are available on BirdGuides. This superb bird takes me up to 291 for my British list. Only 9 birds to go......
Until next time, Foghorn out!
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