I had what I assumed was going to be a routine visit this morning to my St. Nicholas Church patch site …. see here.
It was anything but routine and my visit provided me with my best record ever for the site.
It is often said that local patch watching is the “bread and butter” of birding, enabling you to regularly see common birds appropriate for the habitat plus the occasional bonus of some more uncommon or notable species.
Exceptionally, if ever, you might see something really uncommon or even rare and the joy of local patch watching is that some day all your efforts to regularly visit your site and record and monitor species may be rewarded.
I have visited my St. Nicholas Church patch site for many years now but much more intensively since March 2020 when travel restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic forced me to “stay local”.
This morning, I had my reward when I struck "patch gold"!
During my visits, I always spend a bit of time at a watchpoint accessed from the track from Larkins Tyres and then a short track through the woodland to some fencing .
This provides a position to scan the field and the trees, hedges and scrub bordering it. From here, I have frequently seen Red Fox and Reeves’ Muntjac plus also Common Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Little Egret, Grey Heron, Cormorant, Mallard, Canada and Greylag Geese and many other species.
Immediately opposite the watchpoint and at the shortest span of the field is a large oak tree, shown in the right of this photo taken this morning ….
Whilst I was watching this area, I momentarily caught a
flash of white of a small bird which immediately disappeared. Initially, I
thought it may have been a Bullfinch. This species shows a bright white
rump in flight and the hedge and scrub habitat are right for it. It is a species that I have recorded at the site over the years but only on a few occasions and
never on an annual basis. Therefore Bullfinch would have been a very notable
and welcome sighting.
Moments after that brief glimpse, the bird re-appeared and I would have fallen off my chair if I had been sitting on a chair to fall off 😀.
Cardiac defibrillators should be installed at various locations around the site just in case of immediate severe shock 😀.
Bullfinch?
I don’t think so!
No …. a stunning male PIED FLYCATCHER!!!
Double take …. recompose …. repeat …. yes, a stunning male PIED FLYCATCHER!
Absolutely immaculate in his black and white plumage.
Quite obviously, this was my first record for the site, bringing my site total for bird species to 52.
It was also, not surprisingly, my first record anywhere in the UK this year.
I did think it was my first record ever in Essex but when I got home my Excel spreadsheet summarising my records since the mid 1970s showed that Pied Flycatcher was already on my Essex list of 229 species although I do not recall where or when I saw it. I am guessing that it was probably at The Naze, Bradwell or one of the other Essex migration hotspots.
I manage to record Pied Flycatcher annually for my all-UK year list but almost exclusively in mid-Wales, although most recently in 2020 in Gloucestershire (Forest of Dean), where I see it alongside the other mature oak woodland species, namely Common Redstart and Wood Warbler. All of these species can be recorded in eastern England (usually on the coast) during the spring and autumn and as passage migrants as they move through either to or from their breeding ranges.
Pied Flycatchers can be seen in the UK from April to October and the map below from the RSPB indicates their approximate distribution. Yellow shows the breeding range whilst pink shows where birds may be seen on passage migration.
Having initially discovered this Pied Flycatcher at around 8 a.m., I was able to watch if for around 45 minutes before I eventually lost sight of it. During this time, it foraged and fed actively in and around the oak tree and occasionally, through my binoculars, I could see that it stopped to sing. Unfortunately, I was unable to hear it due to the bird's distance from me.
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