Thursday October 30 - The Earlswood Twite

 It's been a difficult week for your's truly. On Monday I contracted a horrible stomach bug which laid me out for a couple of days. Gradually the symptoms subsided and I consoled myself with the thought that there wasn't much about anyway. 

But birds have a habit of biting you on the bum. This morning, feeling much better, I was nobly counting Woodpigeons heading west over Redditch, wondering whether to stick at it or go to Morton Bagot when my Whatsapp pinged. Two possible Twite off the causeway at Earlswood. The second record for Earlswood, the previous one having been in 1957.

Timing is everything, and there was an issue. I wasn't able to go for at least ten minutes. It proved critical. 

Arriving at Malthouse Lane car park thirty minutes after Matt G's alert, I was hopeful the birds were still there. A further message had confirmed the identification and that John Oates was also now watching them. But half way down Malthouse Lane as I tried to disentangle scope, camera bag, tripod and binoculars, John Sirrett pulled up and gave me the news that they'd flown. Oh NO!

There still seemed to be hope. They had flown off below tree-top level and may still have dropped down somewhere along Windmill Pool. John had missed them by seconds, and I accepted his offer of a lift as we headed for the bottom end of Windmill. Sadly, our efforts were in vain. Eventually we were forced to watch a lady member of the public walk down the shore towards us, but as far as we could tell she didn't flush anything finch-like. She approached and asked whether she had caused us any difficulty. We did well to be polite.

Further searching proved fruitless. Compensation (ha ha) provided by a Green Sandpiper, a fly over Lapwing and a few Fieldfares.

John Oates has kindly allowed me to use his gripping photograph of one of the birds.

Twite by John Oates, found by Matt Griffiths.

You have to be philosophical about it. Sometimes you're going to arrive too late. I'm genuinely pleased for Matt and John who probably put in more hours of quality birding at Earlswood than anyone else. They were the right people to have seen them.

Twite used to breed on the moors in North Staffordshire and the south Pennines and continue to do so in Scotland. Consequently assiduous searching through Linnet flocks in the West Midlands would occasionally turn up a Twite. But they've got a lot rarer since the turn of the 21st Century and the records have all but dried up.

These two birds, at a place which had only ever seen one before, maybe the wake up call we need. Those Linnet flocks could still be worth checking.