If you don't pay too much attention to news from the bird world, you might have missed that Britain’s birdwatchers were ecstatic last week. Why? Because an unprecedented flock of songbirds from North America arrived on UK shores. And to make things even more exciting, several ‘uber-rare’ species were among their numbers.
The birds had been blown over the Atlantic in the aftermath of Hurricane Lee and hundreds of avian buffs flocked to the coastline to greet them.
Dr Alexander Lees, chair of the British Ornithologists’ Union Record Committee called it the ‘largest such arrival ever recorded in the British Isles’ and the website Rare Bird Alert described it as ‘one of the most memorable couple of days in British and Irish birding history’.
As of Monday, September 25, 49 individual birds across 15 different species were spotted and Pembrokeshire in West Wales was spoiled with the most sightings. Its visitors included the yellow and black feathered Canada warbler, which has never been seen in the UK before; the bay-breasted warbler, which had only been seen once before and a tyrant flycatcher and magnolia warbler which were both firsts for Wales. (A quick warning in advance: the story probably won't have a happy ending.)
The occasion is rather bittersweet. As Lees told the Guardian: ‘these are the fortunate few as most of the migrants displaced by the storms will have drowned at sea’. The birds that did make it likely won’t be able to fly back across the Atlantic, which means that they’ll have to find sufficient food here in order to continue south and find somewhere warm for winter. Unfortunately experts say that most of them are unlikely to survive.
Sorry, you were warned.
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