Cedar Waxwing – Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, 23rd February 1996
And so soon after the Summer Tanager scare. Wednesday was the first day of the twitch and typically I was on my way to Belfast! Aargh! Anyway, I still made the most of the trip, despite the probable dip hanging over me. On the Thursday I ‘phoned Paul Pugh from the Pressure Reduction Station at Ballylumford on Islandmagee, Country Antrim in the afternoon. He had seen it on the Wednesday, which was enough to convince me to go for it, but having heard Paul’s advice regarding avoiding the scenes at the weekend I was convinced. Or nearly so. As I was convincing myself, and convincing myself of my strategy, the bird disappeared….. . Typical!
This made me very indecisive about my plans – making things all the more baffling for Steve Boothroyd and Stuart Webster (the two work colleagues I was with) as we left Ballylumford and Islandmagee. I caught the Seacat from Belfast at 16:30, arriving at Stranraer at 18:15. From there I drove to Creetown, stopping off at the rented accommodation we shared in Creetown and at the nearby construction base, before swopping vehicles and driving to Burnley in my car rather than the work one. Larne to Burnley in seven hours! But despite having ‘phoned mum from the office she was oblivious of my arrival….!
On Friday morning I left Burnley at 07:45, to arrive in Nottingham, following Paul’s useful directions, at c.10:15. By which time it had not been seen for two hours! Rather than waiting aimlessly on Castle Boulevard I opted to drive to the area it had disappeared to on the Wednesday to search rather than stand around. This provided a few distractions – decent bakers, shops, interested locals, etc., but no birds. Following local advice, I opted to move to the nearby Hadyn Road / Mansfield Road area, where eventually at c.12:15 I saw my first Waxwings – 160 of them. Excellent!
Waxwings in numbers – giving really instructive views – with Ray Turley as interpreter – perfect. Just a shame about the fuckwits who insisted on standing right under the rowans the birds were trying to feed in. It was really strange birding in such an urban setting. For instance, at one stage I was ushered up an alley into a plumbers’ merchants’ yard so that I was much closer to the 160 Waxwings in an ash tree where they were waiting for an opportunity to feed!
I eventually left by car to Castle Boulevard to feed myself, again. Whilst in my chosen shop I got ‘gen’ on the bird. Supposedly, it had returned with other Waxwings at 13:00 the previous day, so I opted to wait around. This was fairly numbing, despite a few chats, and produced little – a few Waxwings overhead, plus a few Redwings, etc.. At about 14:00 I cracked, and decided to go back to earlier venues in the car. As I did this there was something of a rush to where some 45 Waxwings were. It seemed it was apparently with them, but by the time I had turned around, parked and assembled my ‘scope, it and they, had moved off, but thankfully only to the nearby Castle Boulevard. Here, amongst c. 150 others, I at last got good views for an hour or so. Unfortunately, these were not in the best light, and always looking up into the trees, but good nonetheless.
As depicted in my notebook, smaller and plainer than Waxwings – strangely reminiscent of Brambling at times when perched amongst the Waxwings and viewed without optics. Whitish undertail coverts rather than chestnut, pale fringes to secondaries, no black chin, very narrow white edge around black ‘highwayman’s’ mask, and yellowish wash to flanks.
Just over three weeks later I returned Nottingham with Mark Hannay the day after we had seen the Redhead nearby. I was not looking forward to attempting to find this bird again, but as luck would have it, we saw it very well, almost as soon as we got to the nearby crossroads on Castle Boulevard.
As such, we were comparatively lucky. The bird was within the parliamentary constituency of Kenneth Clarke, and despite attempting to see it he failed, though in fairness, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time (when these things actually mattered……).
Cedar Waxwing, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, February 1996 (photograph credited to George Reszeter).
Great account Brian. Brought back memories of seeing it the day before with Paul. At one point I jumped on a bus that conveniently pulled in at an adjacent bus-stop, with several other birders, to get down to a location where it had just been reported. A birder, who I didn’t know, boarded the bus in front of me but then fumbled around searching for money to pay the fare, so I just ended up paying for us both to just get going. It was a busy bus too, must have been an odd sight as a bunch of blokes got on with scopes etc.
ReplyDeleteSorry Dave, only just found this. Yes, one of the odder settings for a big twitch.
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