Siberian Thrush

There are a few contenders for bird of the day for 5 October, not least flying from Bristol to Knock in 2008 with Paul Chapman and Dan Pointon to be the first British crew to twitch the Little Blue Heron in Galway, or indeed 2013’s Thick-billed Warbler on Shetland. But the winner is the male Siberian Thrush on Gugh.

As the first full week of October 1999 started, my oppo at work was away for the week (for some reason his wife always wanted to spend a week in a cottage in Pembrokeshire – lovely indeed, but in October?) Time off was therefore at a premium, and I was glad that it was quiet and the forecast suggested it would stay that way. How badly wrong I was! News of the male Siberian Thrush’s presence on Scilly filtered out around 12.30pm on the Tuesday afternoon. The North Ron one in 1992 was too early in my twitching career for me to have gone for it, and I couldn’t get to Norfolk in time in 1994, so this remained a near-mythical bird for me.

My long-suffering boss of the time kindly said yes to that afternoon and the next morning off work, on the wildest of promises – the twitch was on! (Once again living in the southwest and being able to get to Scilly the same day was proving handy.) James McGill and I left Taunton in a hurry, heading to Newquay and a 4pm flight to St Mary’s. On the way we had arranged a lift with an Association boat, but when they saw there were only two of us the boatmen switched to using their own tiny motorised dinghy. Off over to Aggie in that – great fun! I alarmed James further by changing my trousers on the boat (I was wearing white trousers and charging through bramble and thorn in those didn’t seem a good idea – I’d chased after a Wryneck on Mendip after work only the week before and came out of the gorse with my legs looking like the Tour de France King of the Mountains jersey). Luckily there wasn’t much swell, and soon we arrived at the quay on Aggie, only to find that there was a full boatload of departing birders there. So we had to land on the other side of the quay, where there is the small extra wall. It’s a good thing we’re both tall, otherwise we would never have made it. As it was I made the mistake of trying to carry my scope and bag at the same time as grabbing the top of the wall – I nearly went in the drink, but Jimbo gave me a boost up. We got a rousing cheer as we ran up the quay – thanks, guys!

We were on Gugh by about 5.30pm, with not much more than an hour of usable light left, and only a few birders still looking, so we realised the enormity of our task if we were to see the bird that night. A shout went up, but our first view was thrush sp. – totally untickable. Then a huge stroke of luck, as a dark-blue shape flew directly towards us then went vertical like a jet fighter, showing off the Zoothera underwing and chequerboard undertail coverts. Wow! We teamed up with fellow Somerset birder Tom Raven, who was staying on Aggie, and a couple of flight views later he found it perched in a gorse bush and the 20 or so birders present all got fabulous views. What a bird!

We got the boat back to St Mary’s at about 7pm and settled into a night of celebrating under fairly cloudless skies. At the airport in the morning we saw several friends trooping off the chopper with worried looks on their faces, but they had the last laugh. Not only had the Sibe Thrush stayed, but as we collected our kit at the heliport, Mega alert went again – White’s Thrush on St Agnes! A good thing we didn’t need it! Thirty-six hours later we were back on Scilly again anyway, for the Short-toed Eagle this time, but that’s another story.

Philadelphia Vireo

October 2008 had already been pretty busy, especially with Irish trips, but on 13th I was on Portland. I’d spent the hour before the news broke on this bird chasing a smallish Locustella around Perryfields quarry, finally satisfying myself that it was just a small Grasshopper Warbler. (Of what race, though, I now wonder, uselessly?) Then I get a call from Tom McKinney at Birdnet: ‘You need to be in Ireland, mate’. Philly Vireo at Kilbaha! I hastily arranged a flight and faced up to another early morning at Stansted, flying to Shannon this time. Paul and Dan were both tied up and couldn’t go (an unavoidable business meeting in Brussels and an unfortunately timed bout of food poisoning, respectively), so I hoped I would be able to team up with others once there. I bumped into another birder (whose name I forget, sorry) at the airport, who asked whether I wanted to hire a car with him, but I hung fire until reaching the departure lounge, where I met Brett Richards and Richard Stephenson who already had a car sorted and two spare spaces – perfect!

With the bird still present, Brett’s driving across Clare was, erm, ‘committed’. Our chance companion, looking rather pale, sidled up to me as we were getting our gear out of the car at Kilbaha and asked, ‘You are driving on the way back, aren’t you?’ We had parked outside the Lighthouse Inn, so had overshot a bit, and ended up walking the long way round before reaching the right house. Then a splash through a very wet field to view a line of small willows. It was an anxious wait, as others from the same flight had not made the same mistake and had already seen the bird. Then there was a bit of a (splashy) run on, but it wasn’t too long really before we had excellent views of the vireo working its way through the tops of the willows. Only the second record for Ireland, and at that point there had only been one British record, so a huge bird to get.

A comedy moment on the way back out of the field as I tried to straddle an electric fence with one foot ankle-deep in water (my boots and socks were already sodden and had been for some time). I touched the fence with my inner thigh, got a massive belt off it, and ended up in an undignified heap, thankfully on the dry side. Still with a huge grin, though.

After a more sedate drive back, we boarded the return flight at Shannon. Dusk was falling but the sky was clearing: we feared for friends trying next day, and unfortunately the bird disappeared that night.