Sykes’s Warbler – Druridge Bay Country Park, near Hadston, Northumberland, 16^th August 2010

This bird was identified, and the news was duly released, too late on Sunday the 15th August 2010 for me to do anything. Anything other than plan to go the following day excepted that is; it certainly clarified my plans for the start of the ‘working’ week.

So it was that on the morning of Monday the 16th August, once positive news had been forthcoming, that I journeyed from Edinburgh. Druridge Bay Country Park was some two hours away, and I imagine I received comforting positive news updates during my journey.

Now, as has been alluded to, we had very definitely entered the era of rudimentary notes (if any notes at all) and other than the fact that I saw it on the 16th August all I have to go on is a rough sketch I made during (or following?) my successful visit. And my memories, vague though they are.

Basically, I remember being part of the gathered group of birders watching this stonking bird from an access route near that main car-park as it moved through the scrub vegetation on a mature dune ridge between us and the sea. At times it was above our sight-line feeding in vegetation on the crest of the dune and indeed, flying along the dune ridge itself. Particularly at these times it appeared like a distinctive, if very subtle, Hippolais type warbler.

It was a pale sandy-brown colour overall, with paler under-parts than upper-parts. It looked to be quite large, but this was a mislaeading impression, possibly due to the long body shape and tail.

To me it looked particularly long-billed, and I noted the bill was a thin, pointy one. I also noted the beady, smallish looking dark eye and pale face. It had a poorly defined supercilium mainly behind the eye, and the empty face appearance of some Hippolais warblers.

This was the thirteenth for Britain, and fair play to the finder and those who convinced him that he had indeed found one of the biggest i.d. challenges on the British list.

Sykes’s Warbler at Druridge Bay Country Park, August 2010 (photograph credited to Tim Mason).

Sykes’s Warbler at Druridge Bay Country Park, August 2010 (photographs credited to Stef McElwee).