Graham Workman column: we went in search of a rarity!

The bird was a phalarope, A phalarope is any of three living species of slender-necked shorebirds in the genus Phalaropus of the bird family Scolopacidae. For me it was the missing species of the three – a Wilsons Phalarope, I Had previously seen the other two species, Red necked Phalarope and Grey Phalarope – both uncommon birds here in the UK.

This one should have been migrating from Arctic Canada to spend the winter in South America but had obviously turned left when he should have turned right!

The journey to a ‘twitch’ and I suppose we need to explain some of the bird terms. Firstly we’ll start with a “Twitcher’ – basically, a twitcher is an obsessive birdwatcher who keeps a list of every bird they’ve seen. And they are happy to spend a significant amount of money to keep adding birds to their ‘list” at any expense and effort to add new species to the list. Many will have a whole series of additional list to their ‘Life List’ (this is the most important list which adds every bird the have seen) other “important' lists going at any one time, such as a year list a county list, a garden list etc etc. Some groups of twitchers have even chartered aeroplanes to get from The Scillies to Shetland for a rare bird that turned up. Full fat Twitching has ruined friendships, marriages and drain one’s bank account.

Many years ago we had a Black faced Bunting turn up at Pennington Flash and had thousands of twitchers turn up to add it to their lists. What made is so special it was a first record in the UK as well as Europe. A couple of guys had flown from Finland into Manchester airport arrived at Pennington, watched the bird for 5 mins and a taxi back to the airport to catch their return flight!!

So a ‘twitch’ is travelling to a site where a rare or unusual bird has turned up! Right back to our ‘twitch’ – will it have flown, gone into deep cover, not been seen for hours etc etc. Luckily the Wilsons Phalarope was still there and showing well though very distant. I’d took my camera and Marcus was using his iPhone through an adapter that fits onto my telescope. The really flat light and the distance wasn’t any good for photos and I was pretty disappointed with the results – just a few images as record shots of the bird and Marcus got some half decent video.

They are small waders with long legs, slender necks, and very thin, straight, long bills. They also have sharply pointed wings. Phalaropes are the only waders that regularly swim in deep water. They bob on the surface, often spinning in circles to bring small invertebrates within reach of their long slender bills. This one was feeding continually picking small flies off the water surface. We ended up staying just short of 2 hours watching the behaviour of its feeding techniques – fascinating!