YELLOW WARBLER! - 26.12.24

Yellow Warbler courtesy of Lee Woods

There I was at work on Christmas Eve waiting to go home and start my 12 day relaxing (bar decorating) break when news broke of a Yellow Warbler in Kent! I must have let out a sigh of annoyance as my colleagues said what’s up? I told them and said that’ll be a few Christmas family get togethers ruined! Sadly I couldn’t go Christmas morning as I had to be at my mums early for dinner preparations.

My attempt of the Yellow Warbler

For Boxing Day I’d agreed to go to my in-laws for a buffet type dinner and didn’t have to be there until 3pm so I was up at 5.15am and on the road at 6am. For once a rarity wasn’t 4-5 hours away but only 75 minutes. I arrived in the dark and wandered down to join the throng. Around 8am the bird was spotted briefly but the majority of people missed it. It then started calling but again showed briefly to a few.

My blurry photo of the Yellow Warbler

And that was it as it went quiet. 2 Firecrest and a handful of Chiffchaff were noted to keep us occupied but around 11am people started running down the path. Just as I got the group the bird flew back to where we’d just come from and then after 3 hours of nothing it decided to show off continuously for the next 20 minutes and YELLOW WARBLER was on my list.

This 10th for Britain became my 10th American warbler species in Britain and amazingly my 6th species in the last 26 months! 

A great end of the year.

 

Cassiobury Mega - 11.12.24

Just before going to lunch I spotted 2 geese heading towards me and to my surprise they were Brent Geese! They flew over the bowling green heading SE and became the newest species on the Cassiobury Park/Whippendell Woods list and my 114th species for the park.