Crag Martin – Church of St. Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, 10^th November 2015

In mid-November 2015 I was committed to visiting my dad for a few days; I had planned to drive from home in Edinburgh to Chesterfield on Tuesday the 10th November. However, circumstances transpired which caused me to very rapidly bring these plans forward...... .

At midday on Sunday the 8th November the incredible news of a Crag Martin flying around the Crooked Spire in Chesterfield arrived on the pager. So, when this was still being reported the following day, the impossible seemed to potentially be becoming possible, and I opted to disappear off to Chesterfield a day before I had originally planned to do so.

Possibly due to indecision and a confusion of things to do before I departed, I had no chance of seeing the bird that day (the light would have gone by 16:00 and at the best of times it was a five-hour journey).

Therefore, I was reconciled to trusting to luck and getting there the following morning.

Being that it was in Chesterfield, a place I had known since my father had moved there in the late 1970s, I was more than aware of just where it was. As such I knew there was very limited parking nearby, or, more accurately, that any parking there was would be very expensive, especially so if the bird proved not to be co-operative.

For this reason, early the following morning (but not that early, it was mid-November!), I drove from Wingerworth to Hasland, and then along the old Hasland Road to where this had been severed by the A617 dual carriageway. Here I parked up, gathered up my gear and then walked through the under-pass under the mainline railway, to the roundabout at the start of Derby Road and from there up into the town centre along Lordsmill Street and St Mary’s Gate to the St. Mary’s Gate car-park, where a good few birders were already waiting.

I joined them for what proved to be an increasingly nervous wait. It was just gone 07:30 when I first arrived. But an hour and a half later I could not help thinking it had either demised in the night or was a very late riser (or maybe the assembled birders were too busy chatting and had missed it and it was feeding elsewhere as it had on the previous day?). Apparently it had even sullied itself by feeding (and roosting?) at the Proact Stadium..... .

The wait was a little improved by seeing various faces in the crowd that I recognised from the Scillies or wherever. It was just that they were 15 or 20 years older! I also chatted to Dave Graham, the farmer / birder from the Borders who, I think, was there with Dennis Morrison.

Anyway, eventually, it turned out it was just a late riser (not too many insects around early on a November morning in Chesterfield) as all of a sudden it was there!! We variously moved to the pavement alongside St. Mary’s Gate and the buildings opposite the church from where we could watch it twisting and turning around the Crooked Spire overhead, all whilst we were trying to be not too much of an obstacle for the more legitimate users of the pavement and not to be too much of a spectacle for those going by in cars, buses, white vans, etc. (with mixed success....... ).

It was a completely spectacular bird to watch. It was incredibly fast in flight, and also incredibly erratic – almost like a bat, switch-backing through the airspace. Fantastic!!!! I watched it for two hours or so. Another rarity in Derbyshire, to add to the Black-throated Thrush..... . But let’s not go there with rarities in Derbyshire (given my Yellow-nosed Albatross ‘near-miss’!!!). Predictably, it was a first for Derbyshire, and only the tenth for the Britain. Given the speed it moved at in flight, it was hard to get good views of some of the features including the tail spots (arm-ache was definitely a feature of this particular twitch!). It was a ‘chunky’ hirundine, which was overall grey brown but lighter on the under-parts than the upper-parts. It had a broad, square-ended tail and dark under-wing coverts.

All in all, a truly memorably twitch, in no small part due to the setting, right in the middle of Chesterfield (I watched it metres away from where Tessa had once nearly fainted as we were about to cross the zebra crossing outside the public library, for instance).

Although it remained until the 15th and therefore throughout my stay with Dad, I’d had very good views and didn’t bother going again. However, I do have a vague memory that subsequently I drove through Chesterfield past the scene whilst encouraging presumably Dad to look up out of the passenger window of my car as we drove past!

Crag Martin at the Crooked Spire, or, more formally, the Church of St. Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield, November 2015 (photograph credited to Andy Butler).