Magnolia Warbler: The planets had aligned and the birding gods were sliming down on us as the UK was showered with an unprecedented fall of American land-birds. A strong westerly warm front combined with intense winds and associated with movements of low pressure centres produced huge flights of migratory movemnets of birds.
This started with American cliff swallows in Kent, Ireland and Scilly followed by an Empidonax sp. possibly Acadian Flycatcher found on Skokholm which was confirmed as an alder fly, then a report of a magnolia warbler in Pembrokeshire, a bobolink again on Skokholm. A black and white on Bardsey Island topped off with a bay-breasted warbler on Ramsey Island.
This was insane, across two days while I was woking on site in Cambridge my BirdGuid Mega alters kept pinging, I couldn't keep up with the rolling updates on the WhatsApp groups, but started making plans to head down at the weekend.
Its been over 42 years since the last twitchable mag warbler in the UK this mythical bird was showing incredible well in a small dell at St.Govan's Head where the police had the day before kicked all the twitchers off the MoD land who then moved in and set up a cordoned off area to prevent any excitable birders string too far away from the location of the bird.
We were unfortunately unable to book a seat onto the boat crossing over to Ramsey Island so opted to book on to the boat over to Skokholm. The crossing was beautiful, passing past Skomer Island on calm seas and arriving on a stunning little island where the ranges organised a perfect twitch.
Alder Flycatcher: The wardens confirmed that the bird was still present before we arrived and guided us from to boat to the bird with and back then back to the boat. I can't thank the warden, staff and volunteers for their time and efforts getting us on to the bird.
The bird put on a good show as it fed close to a willow tree, there was also a good shot for a red-dumped swallow passing through with a ton of hirundines, but I was too busy enjoying the alder fly to have seen it. This was the third alder fly for the UK since one was discovered 2010 at Blakeney Point in Norfolk.
Canada Warbler: While we were on Skokholm news book of a Canada warbler, a first for the UK. A sense of excitement, thrill, and dread came over us, when can we get off the island and how much carnage will it be when we arrive at the bird?
Well, we arrived in good time but the bird was playing hard to get with only breif obscured views within the 3 hours after arriving.
Waiting patiently and quietly the crowed swelled and grew larger than the patience of some birders cracked and they started playing calls, phishing and pressing deeper into the area of thick dense negation where the bird was last seen. We eventually got some half decent views of the bird moving through the thicket, but on the whole I think many of the people there didn't even see the bird. This week will go down in birding history a day where I picked up three American mega passerines and a weather system with dropped birds all over the west western side of the UK.
