Western Orphean Warbler – Hartlepool Headland, Hartlepool, Cleveland, 29^th May 2012

As had been the case a year earlier, in spring 2012 I was very busy managing and undertaking bird surveys in relation to both the proposed Carcant and Cormaud wind-farms and also working various other smaller projects. Although I had enjoyed something of a recreational weekend on Saturday the 26th May when I had participated in a South East Scotland Branch of Butterfly Conservation walk at Burnmouth in the Scottish Borders to see Small Blue, it was all work and no play. It would take something very significant to break this.

Something very significant duly occurred on the morning of the Tuesday the 29th May and (learning from the experience of the White-throated Robin almost exactly year earlier at the exact same place) I ‘phoned Kris Gibb straight away.

He was up for going straight away too and so basically, we went there and then.

Any notes (and memories!) are very sketchy but I obviously quickly assembled my gear, chucked it and myself into the car, and departed prompto. Unlike the previous year when I had twitched the White-throated Robin with Mike Thrower, I cannot pretend that I remember picking Kris up and chatting to him. That is, I don’t know where we rendezvoused or what we chatted about en route, but I suspect I picked Kris up at the same sort of place I had collected Mike from, and undoubtedly we had a good chat all the way to Hartlepool Headland.

This was an easy journey as it was informed by what had been exactly the same journey a year earlier.

So we made it in good time and parked up wherever we could and quickly ‘strolled’ over to the bowling green. Here, an impromptu ‘pay to enter’ system had hurriedly and commendably been set up. We did so and walked into the bowling green complex itself. Alongside the side of green that the pavilion was on birders were assembled and more birders were also scattered alongside the green on the road side of the complex.

Western Orphean Warbler twitch at Hartlepool Headland, May 2012 (photograph credited to Martin Garner).

The set-up was great as there were wide tarmac paths around the green, and the number of birders present was manageable. As the news had broken just a few hours earlier and birders were travelling from all over the country there were a constant stream of birders arriving and leaving, which kept things manageable.

Most importantly, the bird was showing and so birders were concentrating on taking it in and were not moving around unduly, except if they were arriving or leaving. Importantly this allowed those connected with the bowling club to be relaxed about this sudden invasion of their space; incredibly it was even permissible to sit on the edge of the gutter with your feet on the green! Indeed, this is what I did once I had found myself a suitable place to do so.

Did I say the bird was showing? It was, more or less constantly, but mainly because it was sitting still in the shrubs at the opposite side of the green. Once it was located it could be closely (if a little distantly) observed in the ‘scope as it was static. I have very vague memories that at one stage it left the cover it was in a more actively moved to the side of the green to my right to feed in cover there. But mainly it was static...... ; even when it was active I noted it ‘clambered about’ like a Barred Warbler.

It was a largish sylvia warbler that was a first summer bird, which had slightly brownish mid-grey upper-parts and off-white under-parts. It had a Dipper like head pattern involving a very dark grey cap which extended below the eye onto the cheeks and a white throat and a paler, rustier panel on the remiges. It had a pale-ish eye, and a heavy dark bill and grey legs.

It was the second ever Western Orphean Warbler although this is complicated by the recent separation of Western and Eastern Orphean Warblers (there is just one accepted record of Eastern Orphean Warbler) and there are four records of non-specific Orphean Warbler spp., (including Mick Turton’s famous Kitty Down, St. Mary’s bird, “Ken. Dost thy need Orphean, like?”).

The whole experience was a very good one; I always did have a lot of time for Kris, and I enjoyed the whole ‘feel’ of the twitch which was very sociable. For example, I introduced Kris to Martin Garner (as they were both going to be on Foula in the autumn?), and I enjoyed seeing the Durham Bird Club plaque commemorating the Dusky Thrush that was seen nearby in December 1959, the second ever.

Western Orphean Warbler twitch at Hartlepool Headland, May 2012, with the outstretched legs of yours truly well and truly on the green….. (photograph credited to Jason Stannage).

Western Orphean Warbler at Hartlepool Headland, May 2012(photograph credited to Adrian Webb).