Confessions of a lapsed birder

White-throated Sprrow – Willingham Woods, Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, 24^th February 1993

After having to decline the Suffolk bird the previous year (there had been one at Trimley St Mary for a week or so in late May / early June) and having had to be ‘blasé’ about this one for several weeks as I couldn’t work an opportunity, I journeyed ‘home’ from a visit to see my father in Chesterfield via Willingham Woods near Market Rasen for the long-staying White-throated Sparrow there. This had first been trapped and ringed on the 5th December 1992 but had then proved to be a long-stayer.... .

By now I had a pager, and so I knew it was there the previous day courtesy of my new toy. As such, I arrived with high expectations, and all the more so when I was advised it was still there.

The adrenalin was still flowing all the same as I walked towards the scene of my latest twitch. Once there I was confronted (not literally, but maybe figuratively) by a small brassica field in a clearing within the plantation, adjacent to a small cottage. I assume now this was some sort of game cover crop.

The footpath diverged along the back of a tall hawthorn hedge alongside the field, and through the middle of the brassica field. On the field side of this hedge a mixed flock of finches plus were feeding. Birders stood amongst the brassica, watching the base of the hedge, where birds were feeding unobtrusively. So much so, that it took me ages to get onto the bird itself, partly due to my attempt to get to a better viewing place by positioning myself at the base of a hawthorn in the hedge running perpendicular to the main one.

I re-joined the group to eventually be rewarded by sightings (usually very brief) of the bird as it emerged into the grass and brassica at the edge of the field. During this time, the militant birder in me re-emerged. Throughout proceedings the birders were noisy, and the birds flighty. My demeanour was stretched to breaking point when some halfwit snapped a twig, at which point I also snapped. I abruptly asked him if he had to do that and suggested he had no idea and was brain dead, as you do.

However, back then, to the bird. It was unobtrusive, and views were brief. During this time a bird very roughly analogous with an accentor / bunting cross showing a black and off-white head pattern, but little yellow was noted – otherwise it was strangely reminiscent of Dunnock! It had a buff wing-bar created by the tips of the greater coverts. The upper-parts were otherwise mid-brown with a dark streaked back, and the under-parts were pale grey-brown, faintly streaked with dark brown.

The whole experience wasn’t very rewarding and wasn’t as exciting as looking through flocks of Zonotrichia sparrows in California for Golden-crowned or Harris’s Sparrows..... . But that’s another story.

As is seeing my second, one for my Scottish, and indeed Isle of May, lists, in August 2026 after my very good friend David Steel, the National Nature Reserve Manager on the Isle of May, excelled himself by finding just the first Yank passerine (and third Yank) for the Isle of May, just a couple of days before I arrived to facilitate a Bird Observatory Committee ‘Gathering’ on the island. As such, I was able to take in the bird in excellent company three days running and commence the ‘Gathering’ with a committee twitch, as you do.