Saturday 3 January 2015

Little Beauty

Ended the year with a nice bonus UK tick, as did many lucky birders.

At some point when I was in Australia (November) I got news of a Little Bustard being in the UK, but it didn't hang around and so that was that, or so I thought (plus I was seeing lots of great birds so didn't really care!). But then one was reported on the south coast near the end of December - the same, or another? It got me a little more interested... But I had no real intentions of driving to the south coast.

The next day, New Years Eve, one was found near Flamborough in East Yorkshire. So I shot across there and in no time at all I was enjoying nice views of this very rare bird to the UK - the first in Yorkshire since 1956!

In the rush to get to the site I forgot my camera, so I've just got a little record shot (below) from my phone -admittedly it does look a bit like a female Pheasant in this picture!

Little Bustard (Phone-scoped) Andy Walker

A really great find, and re-find so thanks to everyone involved. The bird hung around on the 31st and was also present on the 1st January 2015 for those who couldn't get there on the 31st. However is was not there on the 2nd. It was the first mainland twitchable bird for years - possibly since about 1996! It was the first I'd seen for a number of years, since I was in Spain/Portugal.

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