Mid afternoon on Sunday 19th October 1997 a message flashed on to the pager “Siberian Rubythroat ♂ Osmington Mills, Dorset”, the first mainland one since Durham 1975.
Within moments Geoff had phoned and in another 15 minutes we were on our way. At that point in time Geoff had a Peugeot 305 Diesel Turbo that went like the proverbial off a shovel and it’s the quickest I have ever got to Dorset (in less than 2 hours).
Normally I am not the hottest navigator (but that’s another story) but we got there in record time, we pulled up at the spot in Osmington to see a fair few cars already there. I noticed Martin Cade (Portland bird Obs warden) and a few other Dorset birders leaving and they indicated that the bird was still present. We walked through a gateway in to a field that had an area of hedge and scrub and the bird was apparently in there. I am not sure how long we waited but after a time the bird was seen and it was a spanking ♂ (1stw) and some very good views were had with the bird around 20 metres away. After satisfying ourselves with the views we had and the bird had disappeared in to cover we decided to take our leave. We also noticed another SODOFF’er, Justin Taylor there and I think he was the only other Oxfordshire birder to make it on the day.
The drive home was very relaxed with that satisfying feeling of seeing an “ultra-mega” and an absolute beauty of a bird.
The following day, (as we saw in the national press), there were hundreds there but the bird had apparently gone (sorry guys) much to the disappointment of the many there.
A little while later we had a SODOFF meeting and I wore a T-shirt that Lew had done with a Rubythroat on it and I used a marker pen to write a few comments much to the dismay of others people at the meeting who got there on the Monday (sorry Nick). However there has been a couple of “twitchable” rubythroats since so no hard feelings eh!
No comments:
Post a Comment