Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Thursday 17 April 2008

On this day - 17/04/1999

VC55 - Leicestershire and Rutland, slap bang in the middle of England. No coastline, precious little woodland, even less decent open heathland/moorland. Plenty of reservoirs and gravel pits though. And 100s square miles of dull farmland. Unsurprisingly, we are not exactly on a major migratory flight path and whilst we do get the odd rarity and have some very good birds on the county list, we get very few genuine 'mass-twitch' megas. 17/04/1999 was one of those days though when every keen lister in Britain was trying desperately to get here quickly - to Swithland Reservoir in fact. And the reason for this was that Steve Lister had found a superb and highly sought after Crag Martin. Prior to this bird, there was literally a handful of people in Britain that had seen one on our shores - but now one was within reach and performing amongst its commoner congeners. As it happened, I was sitting at my desk at work on this Saturday morning when the news broke. The mobile rang. A usually calm John Hague is ranting on about have I looked at my pager and can I pick him up on the way. My pager was in the car (I wasn't expecting a door-step mega during the couple of hours I expected to be at work). "What? Crag Martin? Swithland Res!? FUCK!!!" The journey from South Wigston to Swithland Res, via Narborough Road, was swift to say the least. As we arrived, there was already 20 or so local birders and visitors from the closest neighbouring counties were also just arriving. We almost immediately got good views and watched it for while as the ever-growing crowd got bigger and bigger. It wasn't always in view though and disappeared for long periods between sightings. We eventually left by the back road as Kinchley Lane was quickly becoming a car park and it was going to get messy! An estimated 1500 arrived and left during the day. Most of those who got there before early afternoon would have seen it, but after a brief showing at c13:45 it was not seen again although there were a couple of late evening reports which may have been more hopeful than reliable. The next morning the gathered crowd must have been even more pissed when the bird was relocated in West Yorks before disappearing for good. A superb County and British tick, and by far the biggest twitch the county has ever seen.

4 comments:

The Drunkbirder said...

A good day indeed. As far as I know this is a bird that still isn't on LRG Ego's British list. Though I'm sure a birder as good as Lee will have 'picked' up a fly-by and got some arsehole like Matthew deans to verify the record. He will of course not have bothered submitting it to the BBRC just voted to accept his own record!

Skev said...

Never mind the shell-suited mono-visioned self-appointed mole-bearing rarities committee, it's probably on the same list as his Pacific Swift (the 'I nearly got there in time' list).
I'm sure that there must have been at least one county lister from the time that missed this bird for some reason or other?

Anonymous said...

.....and Janet and I were just out for a quiet walk around the reservoir. Jeez, what a crowd !
Wish we'd stopped for a quick look now.......

davidearlgray said...

I most thank Mr Fray, for driving from Western Park to Swithland Res in less than nine minutes to see the Crag Martin flying over the reservoir.
Probably one of the best twitches I have ever witnessed!