This morning I'd reached the eastern side of the ruck and was about to drop down to view Ramsdales reedbed when I heard an interesting call, a woody "tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck". A quick scan around revealed what looked like a blackbird sitting in the top of a tree but even against the light I could see that it had a pale wing panel and was clearly a ring ouzel.
I tried to manoeuvre myself into a better position for the light but only
succeeded in flushing the bird into trees about 200m away on the other side
of the canal, about 150m west of the Common lane footbridge. It seemed
pretty settled so I walked up to the canal footpath and watched it for a
while from there.
Suddenly the bird flew towards me and landed back in the same place
where I had initially seen it. In flight I could see a silvery underwing
contrasting with the dark body, quite unlike blackbird which has a dark
underwing.
When landed I could see that it was dark grey with a scaley looking breast
due to pale feather fringes. It only had a weak crescent.
This was a new species at the flash for me and over a month later than my
latest ever in the UK. For these reasons and others, it was probably the
most unexpected bird of the year. It's the end of November and overnight
we experienced the first cold snap of the winter with snow on the ground
and ice on the flash, seemingly not ideal conditions for a summer visitor
and passage migrant such as ring ouzel. Furthermore, it was landed. Ring
ouzels are very rare at the flash with only a handful of records, and
almost all are flyovers during vismig on the ruck.
Late autumn birds in the UK are generally considered to be migrants from
fenno-scandinavia, and I assume that the northerly winds we are
currently experiencing have brought this bird to the UK. If it was at
Spurn or Flamborough or Norfolk or any of the coastal migration hotspots
around the country it would be a great find but less surprising, but to
turn up here at Pennington Flash is unexpected to say the least.
A fabulous bird!
I only just got it in this picture though!
It was a glorious but cold day at the flash.
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