Stuart Elsom writes:
I’ve just returned from seeing Britain’s first EASTERN CROWNED WARBLER in County Durham, northeast England. There was a huge twitch, with about 500 birders present at dawn for this superb bird.
Britain's First Eastern Crowned Warbler. © Dougie Holden.
The discovery of this bird is a very interesting story. A photographer was visiting a site where Long-eared and Short-eared Owls often come in off the sea. He was lucky enough to have an owl arrive very near where he was standing, but was uncertain whether the bird was a Long-eared or a Short-eared.
The photographer posted his owl photos and invited comment from local birders–and on the same page was a photo of the “Yellow-browed” Warbler he’d photographed nearby earlier that day.
Visitors to the website quickly lost interest in the owl images when they came to the conclusion that the warbler was in fact an EASTERN CROWNED, the first for Britain.
Happily, the bird was still present today.
The English east coast is proving to be a real magnet for “Sibes” right now, with many Radde’s, Pallas’s, and Dusky Warblers. There have also been a few Red-flanked Blue-tails, Pechora Pipits, an Eye-browed Thrush, a Brown Shrike, and from North America, two Veeries.
- Stuart
On the same day I had noticed a bird I had never seen before spending a long time pecking at the food which had dropped down from our feeders. I was late for work because I wanted to identify it. The nearest I could get was a Garden Warbler. We have never had any warblers at all in our garden so could it be possible it was a Eatsern Crowned Warbler too? It seemed more like a black stripe going above its eye though, whilst your picture above has a light stripe in amongst the darker colour on the side of the face. In my identification book the Garden Warbler didn’t have much of any stripe at all. What do you think? We live in Forest Hill, South East London.