Back in Time – Pacific Swift 30th May 1993.

I arrived back from Didcot with my daughter as we had just done our monthly shop at Tesco’s on the Sunday morning and just as I pulled up the pager went off with a “mega alert” – Pacific Swift, Cley, Norfolk!

I quickly asked my daughter to empty the car and put things away while I rushed upstairs got my birding kit and made a few phone calls. I was also thinking at the time, a 4 hour trip to Norfolk, Swifts don’t normally hang around so will it still be there however if you don’t go for it you won’t see it anyway so the twitch was on.

This incidentally was the 2nd record for Britain? And as it turned out the 1st twitchable, the 1st found resting on a North Sea gas platform.

I picked up Geoff and Roger Wyatt and off we “raced” to Norfolk. We hit the road and headed east, as we got on to the M25 we immediately run in to traffic, very frustrating! Crawling along when there was a mega around 100 miles away. After a time we came alongside another birder’s car whilst in the traffic jam and as I remember they were not aware of the “Cley Swift” and we then passed on the info. After a while we were clear of traffic and put on our best speed to Cley and constantly checking the pager for the latest info.

On arriving at Cley the coast road by the marsh was absolutely solid with cars parked on every available verge so we drove along and saw a gap next to a gate, now I don’t normally block gates but this was an exception, so bang, we were in and parked!

The others raced from the car and crossed the road while I shut the doors and locked the car.

Mark Golley as I recall was at one of the entrances collecting an entrance fee for the twitch and Geoff paid for all of us, so over the bridge and out on the path by the marsh, fortunately the Pacific Swift was still present with a flock of Common Swifts feeding over the marsh.

I suppose, fortunately it was a cloudy day with low cloud over the whole area and the swifts stayed in the vicinity feeding.

We stood there scanning the flock and occasionally picking out the swift with the white rump but not really getting prolonged views, people were arriving all the time and quite a few still had not seen it, then Geoff locked on to it and called “it's over the brown cow”. That was it I managed then to lock on and so did many others, good call!

We then watched it for around another ten minutes and then a small sun lit gap appeared in the clouds and within a couple of minutes virtually all the swifts had gone including the PS.

Whilst we were all celebrating birders were still arriving but alas the bird was never seen again. As usual after a successful twitch the journey back was less fraught and far more relaxed than the outward journey.