Dusky Thrush – Beeley, Derbyshire, 9^th December 2016

Stonking white-ish supercilium, warmish grey-brown upperparts, very strongly black flecked white underparts (more than shown?), strongish dark bill.

Metaphorically, the ink on my account of the Killdeer twitch was not even dry when it emerged there was a Dusky Thrush in Derbyshire, and better yet, north-east Derbyshire. I had returned from Lerwick to Aberdeen overnight on Saturday the 3rd December / Sunday the 4th December and from Aberdeen to Edinburgh on Sunday the 4th December.

At 15:35 that day Rachel Jones posted her first photograph of the Dusky Thrush on the UK Bird Identification Facebook page. Whilst it very quickly was established that the photographs involved had been taken in Derbyshire and then in north-east Derbyshire, it was only later, at 20:40, that it emerged via Birdforum, that the location was Beeley..... the very same Beeley that I went through every-time I visited my Dad in nearby Wingerworth, Chesterfield.

Anyway, after a lot of the typical social media guff on Birdforum that night, the good news was that there were positive messages on Rare Bird Alert the following morning, and these continued for the rest of the week...... .

So, my next problem was when could I get there?

Once I arrived back from Shetland / Aberdeen I had a very welcome day and a half at home on the Sunday and Monday before I departed to London for a quarterly Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management Membership Admissions Committee meeting during what was planned to be literally a flying visit on Tuesday the 6th December.

However, due to fog-related delays I eventually aborted the outbound flight and returned home (despite having checked-in, cleared security, walked to the gate and even boarded the plane....).

Frustratingly, this meant I could have gone to Derbyshire at the beginning of the week...... .

Subsequently the problem was that I was going to Keith in north-east Scotland to return to work on the Blackhillock to Keith 275 kV Cables Project before I could contemplate a trip to Derbyshire. Further, I was already scheduled to be going to Lancashire on Saturday the 10th December for a football game in Burnley and a From the Jam performance in Clitheroe.

Additionally, there was no way I could contemplate twitching a Dusky Thrush in Beeley without factoring in visiting my ailing Dad in Chesterfield....... .

A game-plan emerged which involved making my visit north a midweek one and then driving back to Edinburgh on the night of Thursday the 8th December, enabling me to be in position to go for it early the following morning, hopefully then connecting with it before having the best part of a day at Dad’s before going to Burnley as planned on the Saturday.... .

This all came to pass.

I planned on getting up at 04:30 but as I was awake earlier, I got up and sent off some good while before the alarm. The journey was uneventful; I stopped for a nap at Tebay Services and was delayed by the rush hour congestion on the M61 and M60 so I didn’t arrive until gone 10:.00 or so (well into the last session of the India v. England test in Mumbai which was on Test match Special and helped pass the journey....).

Arrive I did in what was a very busy Beeley. Having quickly assessed the congested situation I opted to park on one of the roads in a space a departing birder was just vacating.

I had largely already assembled my gear in a brief ‘pit-stop’ near the Sparrowpit (appropriately!) so I was quickly ready.

But where to go........?? Two main focal points of activity were evident; one further along the road where birders were loosely congregated and one in the playing field area behind nearby buildings.

I opted for the latter, which was the nearer option.

This proved to be a good choice as the object of my quest proved to be distantly (and difficultly) visible on the ground in a small field on the hillside to the north of the village. Once I had garnered the necessary information from the garbled and limited directions available (and located the right telegraph pole and area of the right field relative to that) I got (somewhat obscured) distant views of it.

Hurrah. However, the light was shocking and even zoomed up to 60x (or perhaps as my ‘scope was zoomed up to 60x!) the clarity was poor.

I could see enough though.

It was at this point that Jonny Holliday appeared and, after a chat, he returned to where he and Darren Woodhead were viewing from, and I joined them there. They were nearer to the Dukes Barns Outdoor Activity Centre and we each took advantage of the bacon butties which were brought out. This location was even further away but we then noticed that birders were assembling in the lower parts of the same field the bird was in. We made our way there, each carrying some of Darren’s painting gear.

Unfortunately, by the time we arrived there the bird had moved into the nearby hedge and although there were various sightings which resulted in me moving around, I didn’t see it there at all.

That is, until it was suddenly spotted at the very top of a large oak tree and as such was just about visible there through the crown of a similarly large oak tree closer to where Darren and I were. I struggled to get both my ‘scope and Darren on it before it flew off. It was fairly obvious that it was returning to favoured location in the village which Darren and I surmised was the orchard so we followed, or at least did so once he had assembled all of his gear, and we had joined the queue to squeeze through the stone stile.

Therefore, by the time had walked back onto the road in the village, and joined the assembled crowd in the same place I had seen them on my arrival, most good places were already taken.

It appeared that birders were looking over a tall dry-stone wall into the old orchard beyond but again there was a strange reluctance to give any coherent directions.

Anyway, given this, Darren and I opted to position ourselves in what to us was the obvious place, adjacent to a convenient gap in the wall created by what was evidently a recent collapse.

Darren assembled his painting gear amongst the dry-stone wall debris, and I place his ‘scope there and set up mine nearby.

It then became apparent that the bird was just a few metres away in the orchard. But as the wall was about two metres high, and as the ground level of the orchard was above than the road surface and adjacent verge, and as it also undulated, viewing was difficult.

People in front of me had specs which provided views over the wall, and fortuitously (and as anticipated!) one gave up his place and I took it. This involved standing on two of the fallen stones from the wall, but crucially I could now see over the wall, and better, I could get my elbows on it.

Brilliant.

For the next 20(?) minutes the bird performed really well, or at least it did for those of us with ‘front row seats’.

It fed on the ground in and around the base of an apple tree and around a cut section of apple tree trunk. Although it was often in a hollow and out of view even for the likes of me, it generally showed well, and was within 20 or 25 m! This was just as well, as the light was still appalling.

However, I made the most of my prime spot (well, generally so, although I got a big fail with Darren’s camera which he had handed to me!).

It unobtrusively fed on fallen apples, etc., on the floor of the orchard alongside Blackbirds, Fieldfares and so on.

It occasionally perched up on the cut section of apple tree trunk, and eventually flew up into one of the apple trees where it briefly remained, before finally flying off.

It was surprisingly big (just smaller than a Blackbird) and quite robust, with a strong head pattern. The upper-parts were predominately a greyish mid-brown with paler fringes to the remiges (with a hint of rufous brown in the tertials) whilst the under-parts were a cold white varyingly flecked with dark tips to the feathers, coalescing into blackish patches, in particular on the malar patch and sub-moustachial stripe, and, interestingly more on one side of the breast than the other. It had a stonking supercilium contrasting with the dark crown and eye-stripe and ear coverts. It had a partial eye-ring under the eye and a large white area on the throat. It had a strongish bill which was predominantly dark, though it had a paler base and cutting edge to the lower mandible.

Once it flew off Darren and I decided to cut our losses and he finished off his paintings, and we packed up our gear and returned to our cars. We chatted to various other birders (I was in the company of a minor celeb after all!) and contributed to the collection bucket outside the Dukes Barn. Here we also chatted to one of the staff members there, who was interested in Darren’s paintings for the centre, and who we showed the collapsed section of wall...... . All in all a wonderful twitch, in very many ways, the crowds of born again birders excepted... .

Dusky Thrush, Beeley, Derbyshire, December 2016 (photograph credited to Andy Butler).