Another day - another PENDULINE TIT dip !

SATURDAY 10 NOVEMBER

 

After dipping five times on Penduline Tits during this past week in Kent (three times at Grove Ferry and at Oare Marshes and Dungeness ARC), I was not expecting a call this morning to say that two had been found in BEDFORDSHIRE.......

 

Anyway, at around 1045 hours, Paul Wright 'phoned to say that he and Neil had just found 2 PENDULINE TITS feeding on bulrush heads to the left of the main hide overlooking Wetland 3 at the Marston Vale Millenium Park. I jumped in the car immediately but knew it would be too good to be true. Both Paul and Neil, along with Bob Hook and Rolf, had been running a Bird Walk for the centre and what luck for the six participants - an absolute mega for the county and a real chance sighting.

 

After negotiating the Luton-Bedford 50mph stretch of the M1, I eventually arrived on site at 1145 hours. Tony Revell had stumbled in on the birds, and both Andy Plumb and Steve Blain had successfully twitched them, albeit the latter observer just getting less than ten seconds of viewing before they flew off.  The two birds actually remained in the area for 45 minutes, actually returning on one occasion after they flew off. They called several times, particularly in flight, and did go missing for ten minutes at one time, even though they were still in the reeds.

 

I checked the site exhaustively - from every angle - and on every wetland - but it was a needle-in-a-haystack job. Those bulrushes to the left of the hide definitely seemed to be the best crop but there were a lot more scattered all over - and very difficult to view. As expected, I failed to find the two birds, as did the 50 or so other observers that eventually turned up.

 

Compensation came in the form of 6 BEARDED TITS (a party of 5 including two ringed males and a single male performing intermittently from the hide), 2 BOHEMIAN WAXWINGS (initially seen by Neil and Paul in flight before being relocated by I not far from the bench some 15 minutes later and then showing intermittently in Hawthorns by the hide early afternoon) and a very late BARN SWALLOW that Steve Blain and I saw over the Pillinge Pit, presumably a European.

 

Also noted were up to 5 different Cetti's Warblers, 25 Fieldfares, 40 Redwings, 6 LESSER REDPOLL and a number of Siskins, with a Great Spotted Woodpecker regularly visiting the bird feeder in front of the hide.

 

There has been just ONE previous record of Penduline Tit in Bedfordshire - an adult at Priory Country Park on 18 September 1991. I missed that one too.......

 

Let's hope we get another chance.....