Red-flanked Bluetail –Winspit, near Worth Matravers, Dorset, 31^st October 1993

As suggested in the account for the (Western) Black-eared Wheatear, as Paul Pugh, Neil Tasker and I journeyed back from our successful visit to North Norfolk, the pager alerted us to the presence a Red-flanked Bluetail at Winspit in Dorset as we reached the A1(T). That is, a mainland, and therefore potentially twitchable, Red-flanked Bluetail!!!!!!

Quandaries ensued. There were whole series of them. Firstly though, as it was about 15:30 there was obviously no chance of getting there that evening.

But tomorrow.......... ? We each had our own thoughts. I didn’t fancy it. Red-flanked Bluetail was a notorious one day bird, and there would be huge galleries and queues, oh, and then there was the drive to Dorset and back, after the one for Black-eared Wheatear to North Norfolk and back before a drive to be back at work on the Scotland to Northern Ireland Pipeline Project in Newton Stewart, Galloway.

However, as we travelled back to Leigh, I slowly convinced myself that we should have a go, as, again, it was too good an opportunity to miss. A 06:00 start was again discussed, but later, once back at Paul’s, we realised that the thing to do was to wait for any news the following morning.

This we did. After getting news at about 07:50 we were off by 08:30. It was an uneventful drive, although it was livened up, at least for Paul and Neil, as I found a telephone box and 'phoned someone, and then blithely informed them as we reached the Bournemouth and Poole area that I had made arrangements to pick up an extra passenger and that a diversion would be in order.

I explained more; we were now picking up Alison Bunting, who had been my girlfriend when I worked in Dorset and Hampshire on the Purbeck to Southampton Pipeline. Alison is that unfortunate combination of an agoraphobic birdwatcher and so really enjoyed her birding with me, and as such, I couldn't really see a mega in her county and not at least contact her. Although Paul and Neil kept their opinions to themselves, they were undoubtedly horrified, as what I proposed would involve delays (whether or not it involved collecting a woman!) which could jeopardise our success.

As it was, with minimum fuss really, we picked up Alison in Wimborne and then continued on, at increasingly urgent speeds, to Worth Matravers. As we reached the scenes (car-parks, returning birders, etc.) the pager announced the queues had gone. How good was that? All the same we hurried down into the Winspit valley past the stream of returning birders – one of whom was Andy Clemnets. He advised me not to panic and go chasing for it, but rather to wait for it near the sycamore, looking into the scrub on the valley side, as the bird had a circuit and would show there.

And so it was. Really easy! Brief but very good views of an absolute gem which showed extremely well for the assembled audience on the track – so close that some, Alison included, couldn’t focus down on it!

A real stunner. Yes, it was red-flanked and blue-tailed! It was a slim Robin-type bird – which was perhaps longer-tailed than a Robin, but the size and structure was basically similar. It had pale under-parts. Contrasted to Red-breasted Flycatcher in terms of the red flanks and the dark-centred blue tail, blue rump and also the blue-brown lower back, but the comparison was valid in other ways. For example, it had a distinct but partly broken pale eye-ring. It had a thick base to the bill – again like a flycatcher. Both the bill and legs were dark.

Now, I should explain that at the time Red-flanked Bluetail was an extremely rare bird (this was just the 14th) which was notoriously difficult to twitch; almost all the previous thirteen records were one day birds and / or on remote islands and / or trapped.

Conversely, this bird remained around from the 30th October to the 8th November and so was a massive ‘un-blocker’. Not only that, it heralded a radical change in status of this species. The first record was in 1903, and the second in 1947. The third was in the 1950s, and the fourth in the 1960s. This rate of one per decade increased somewhat to five in the 1970s but there were only three in the 1980s. Our bird was one of two in 1993, although more typically, the other involved a one-day bird which was trapped on Fair Isle.... .

Subsequently though, the species has become much more frequent. Without really trying too hard (despite the species remaining a ‘high status’ bird), by 2020, I had seen at least six more, and even co-found one! (And I may even be forgetting one or two others!).

These included one in Foveran Bushes, near Newburgh, Aberdeenshire in September 1998, one at St. Abbs Head, near St. Abbs in October 1999 (which Gillian and I had watched from side of a glade as it was feeding around the 12 month old Ellen, sitting on my Barbour jacket on the other side of the glade, in the wood alongside Mire Loch as the 'maddening' crowd crashed around elsewhere ‘looking’ for it), one 'in the hand' at Spurn in October 2013 or 2015, one at Kergord on Mainland Shetland in October 2015, one on St. Agnes, Scilly in October 2016, and, oh, the one ‘found’ by Andy Carroll, ‘Fred’ Fearn and I as we sat inside the entrance lobby of the Community Hall on Fair Isle in October 2017 taking advantage of the free wi-fi. By this time it wasn't even aa BB.

By 2020, there had been something like 200 records since 1993, whereas before my first, as described here, there had only been thirteen.

Red-flanked Bluetail, Winspit, Worth Matravers, Dorset, October 1993 (photographer unknown).