Dark-eyed Junco – Weston, Portland, Dorset, 8^th December 1989

Our quarry, in a quarry, briefly.

The grotty flu, or despite the grotty flu! And it honestly wasn’t twitcher’s flu! What am I on about? Well, some explanation is clearly needed.

I was, at this time, approaching the end of my first full year as an employee of ERL. Prior to this I had worked on a short-term contact for Press Pipelines on the Wytch Farm and Purbeck to Southampton Pipeline Projects, and prior to this, I had, between September 1984 and September 1987, been an employee of Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council (and prior to this I had done two breeding seasons of Upland Bird Survey work for the Nature Conservancy Council and otherwise, apart from some appalling temporary jobs such stacking shelves in a supermarket, serving behind a bar in a pub and working at The Breck farm plucking geese for Quentin Wareing, I had been on the dole courtesy of Margaret Thatcher).

In this context, Friday the 8th December was remarkable, not just because I twitched Dark-eyed Junco (or Slate-coloured Junco as it was for some time) but because it was the very first day I had ever taken off ill. I hadn’t, I must hasten to say, taken the day off to enable me to twitch the bird.

Rather, I had taken the day off as I felt horrible due to what I assume was the flu (I felt as bad as the Rose-coloured Starling we saw after we had seen the junco looked). However, having done so, when, whilst I was moping around at home, the opportunity arose to twitch the junco, I couldn’t resist. Why not? I could carry on moping, or I could see another really good bird. No contest.

Birders threw sickies all the time to go off to see birds. They used endlessly cunning ruses to create the opportunity to see birds during the ‘working’ week. For example, some birders (who perhaps weren’t the most inventive) obviously had multiple grandmas, as they were forever going to their grandma’s funeral. Mike Thompson, my very good friend from St. Albans, came up with a deadly ailment most Octobers, and, like many birders, was in the Scillies for a week or so, carefully wearing sun-block throughout, and swearing Pete Ewer and I to secrecy, as some of his fellow lecturers at the old building college in St. Albans also drank at The Farrier’s. Indeed, the previous October, Pete and I had had a fantastic day in the Scillies when a small group of fellow regulars at The Farrier’s, who had chartered a yacht and then pub-crawled along the Cornish coast to the Scillies, invited us on board the yacht, Tarragon, for the day. We sailed to Tresco, and whilst Pete and I birded they were in the pub, and then we sailed to St. Agnes and anchored in the Gugh Sound, me having taken the helm. I did four islands that day..... . Meanwhile Mike hid.

But I digress. I had very genuinely ‘phoned in sick, and then gone off to see a bird, as an after-thought.

The junco had been around since Sunday the 3rd December (and remained until the 8th April) Pete and I (and possibly Mike, although he would have had to skive off college to do so..... ) travelled from St. Alban’s to Portland (presumably Pete had taken the day off rather than risking waiting until the weekend). Once there we quickly found the appropriate place, one of the quarries near Weston.

As we approached two birders they appeared to be ‘scoping rubbish in the quarry below. Rubbish!! In amongst it the junco was feeding – looking very much like a feeding Chaffinch, or, more to the point, a Teydean Chaffinch (or, as we say nowadays, a Blue Chaffinch – I think!!).

Inconveniently, I had chose to eat an apple just before this; before I could get onto it properly – although I did get it in the bins – it rapidly worked its way out of the quarry, flying to various places en route at which further brief views with my bins were obtained. Ultimately, it moved out of the quarry into a nearby garden, where I got further views with my bins, and crucially, a brief view with my ‘scope. And then it was off.

It had dark grey upper-parts and also under-parts except the belly and under-tail coverts, under-tail and outer tail feathers which were white. It had a pink bill. It called briefly, and this was reminiscent of Yellowhammer, as was the jizz.

Subsequent trips to Weston produced a few more brief views of this bird (unsuccessfully on the 17th December, but successfully on the 28th December).

However, ironically, on the 1st January 1990 I saw another at Church Crookham in Hampshire! This was presumably soon after when the news was finally released; what was considered to be the same bird had previously been there between the 30th May and the 7th June 1987, on the 20th May 1988 and the 7th February 1989 and then from the 26th December 1989 onwards (until the 7th March 1990)!

Dark-eyed Junco, Weston, Portland, Dorset, December 1989 (photograph credited to unknown).