Saturday 14 November 2015

Crag Martin at the crooked spire in Chesterfield

This week saw Britain's tenth record of Eurasian Crag Martin with Derbyshire's first ever being found feeding around the crooked spire of the church in Chesterfield and the bird has become quite predictable and therefore "twitchable" so with this in mind we headed north this morning covering the 150 miles in two and a half hours (smashing my two hour rule) arriving on site around 8.20am. We waited with the twitch which was around two hundred or so strong but the bird didn't show and with dark clouds coming in some birders left at around 10.30am. At around 10.40am the bird finally flew in to be greeted by a loud cheer by those waiting, something I've not experienced on any twitch before but then I guess if you've waited a few hours (or years) to see one then you'd expect a little celebration when you finally do. The mood was lifted and the cameras came out in an attempt to catch record shots of the little belter as it darted around the spire.

My best efforts below....

Record shot of the Crag Martin
A lesson in framing a shot!
The crooked spire
Crag Martin......a blur!
And another blur!

A very difficult bird to find in the binoculars let alone catch on camera.

We watched the bird until 12.20pm and then headed back down the M1 in heavy rain arriving home at 3pm.



Life list now 366, Year list now 268   

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