MOTIVATION SPARK BIRDS
Sometimes, all of us lose our motivation to get out and watch birds. It helps to have a reliable ‘spark’ to rekindle your enthusiasm, writes Stuart Winter
Mega: Magnolia Warbler. St Govan’s Head…
The above text message from Rare Bird Alert, on the evening of 20 September, 2023, left the strains of Alanis Morissette’s Ironic worming their way into my ears. A bad month’s birdwatching had just got a whole lot worse.
Autumn was in full swing and my birding mojo had already dived into the undergrowth like a vanishing Locustella warbler. Our local patch, a glorious migration hotspot for an annual feast of chats and flycatchers, had been put out of bounds by the arrival of a private Pheasant shoot. School run duties for the grandchildren meant early morning ‘vis mig’ watches up in the Chiltern Hills were off the agenda. There was also a new season of football fixtures to referee, several tantalisingly close to some great birding venues, but there’s never an excuse for the man-in-black to be late for kick-off. Somehow, it felt like my birding had been given a red card.
Worse still, I had been halfway through writing an article about the chances of North American passerines arriving on British shores this autumn, when the remnants of Hurricane Lee hit with a vengeance. The fallout was history-making, jaw-dropping. Excruciating…
Has there ever been a more spectacular mega rarity fireworks display in the history of birding as those closing, thrill-filled days of late September? The UK’s first Canada Warbler, second Bay-breasted Warbler, fifth Blackburnian Warbler, along with a fistful of Tennessee and Black-and-white Warblers, were in the vanguard of a full-scale Yank invasion.
Admittedly, my rarity-chasing days are long behind me. Annual adventures on the Isles of Scilly or weekend dashes for the tempting riches disseminated by the old twitchers’ pre-digital grapevine in the late 1980s are now a joyous, if fading, memory. That said, the initial vicarious feelings of euphoria I felt for those lucky souls on the remote outcrops and headlands from Shetland to Pembrokeshire were tempered by the news that not one but two Magnolia Warblers – the third and fourth British records – had also made landfall. It pained.
Of all the birds I have ever marvelled over in the field, or seen captured deliciously on page and screen, the paint-by-number perfection of the Magnolia Warbler is engraved on my retina and enshrined in my heart.
Besides brightening Canada’s dark, dank spruce forests, these sunshine yellow sprites have lit up my mood many a time when the thought of picking up a pair of binoculars was not just onerous but forbidding.
