http://www.birdguides.com/birdwatch Birdwatch•October 2017 9
BIRD NEWS THE BIG STORIES
BRIAN MCCLOSKEYFIRST FOR BIRD NEWSFIRST FOR BIRD NEWSFirst for bird newsFirst for bird news❯
FINDER’S REPORTCorking wood-warbler
Peter Dillon-Hooper’s regular visits to an Irish hot-spot have turned up some
rarities – but none quite as good as the yellow Yank he found this August.I have spent a lifetime of
what one might call low-
profile birding: mostly inland
local patch birding, a few
foreign trips to Europe as a
young man, some grabbed
opportunities on the
occasional overseas business
trip, and so on. In recent years,
though, while I never actually
stop being a birder (when
cycling to work, gardening,
driving, and so on), actually
‘going birding’ has become
something of a now-and-again
activity.
One of the regular ‘now-and-
agains’ has been a trip from
Leicestershire, where I live,
to west Cork. My wife is Irish,
and her parents moved out to
Goleen on the Mizen more than
20 years ago. Short visits at
various times of the year have
delivered some memorable
birds, including exciting self-
finds such as Black Kite and
Wilson’s Phalarope. But none
perhaps so memorable or
exciting as the one it delivered
on Monday 21 August 2017.
I was with my son Eugene,
who is also a birder, having
come to it in adulthood after
catching the bug while being
dragged about by his binocular-
toting father as a child. He’s as
keen as I am now, and a great
help to me with his sharper ear
and eye.
There we were on an utterly
dismal morning shortly after
8 am checking the gardens on
the main road to Mizen Head,
as we have done many times
before. The mist was rolling
around, it was cool, damp and
almost birdless. However, there
is usually something about,
even if it’s just local breeding
birds, and with it being August
and dreary weather we were
expecting nothing more than
that.
As we got out of the car
to go up to the patch by the
road known as Chas’s Willows,
Eugene wondered whether
to bother taking his camera.
He almost left it behind, butwell marked and it had a distinct
narrow median crown stripe. But
I had to concentrate on the real
oddity, rather than trying to turn a
Sedge Warbler into an Aquatic.
I had seen American Yellow
Warbler in Florida in the 1980s,
and my memory of this led me to
tentatively identify our bird as that
species. It had a striking dark eye
in a plain yellow face, yellow on
the tail and underparts, including
the tail coverts, pale legs, slightly
more greeny-yellow above, pale-
edged darker tertials and quite
a stout bill. What I couldn’t be
certain of was whether there was
some other warbler that might
be a possible confusion species.
A quick run back to the car to
consult Collins strengthened the
provisional identification such that
we felt able to put the message
out on Twitter claiming American
Yellow Warbler.
Very soon we were joined by
local birder Dan Ballard, the finder
of a previous American Yellow
Warbler on Mizen Head in 2008;
he confirmed the identification
from the record shots that Eugene
had taken. Although the bird was
now proving to be elusive after its
initial showing, Dan soon found
it again and we managed to get
some clear recordings on a mobilephone of the bird’s surprisingly
loud dzip call.
We had to leave to attend to
family business at 10 am, but
were able to return at about
6 pm, when we found a group
of eight birders all satisfied
with having seen the bird.
Some others had been during
the day, but it is interesting to
note the difference between
the small gathering at Mizen
and the crowds that turned
up at Portland to see the
American Yellow Warbler that
showed up later that day. I
know where I would rather have
been.
And what of the suspect
Acrocephalus? We spotted
it briefly again after the
American Yellow Warbler
stopped showing well. Not a
good enough view to nail it
either way, but well enough for
suspicions to remain (Aquatic
would have been a lifer for
me, unlike American Yellow
Warbler). We thought it right
to put it out as a possible
Aquatic, so that birders arriving
to see the American Yellow
Warbler would be alerted to
keep an eye out.
American Yellow Warbler –
not a world lifer for me, but
my first mega find in 55-plus
years of birding. It was sheer
luck that the bird was showing
well when I happened to look
in its direction, but this was a
memorable, exciting and very
satisfying experience, the more
so for being able to share it
with my son – a lifer for him. It
doesn’t get much better than
this. ■STATS & FACTS
First recorded: Bardsey,
Gwynned, 29-30 August
1964.
Last recorded: Cape Clear,
Co Cork, 24-30 August
2008.
Previous British records:
5
Previous Irish records: 4
Mega rating: ★★★★★I said, rather prophetically as it
turned out, that this was the sort
of morning where you returned
having seen nothing more than
a few garden birds or something
really surprising. So he took the
camera.
One bedraggled Linnet on a
telegraph wire later, we spotted a
Common Chiffchaff and joked that
things were hotting up. Indeed
they were. I next glanced through
a gap in the hedgerow towards a
low willow bush about 10 m away,
and a yellow-looking bird flitted
into view.
With binoculars on the bird,
my thought process was: ‘Bright
juvenile Willow Warbler. Not a
‘Phyllosc’. Icterine? Melodious?
Where’s the eyestripe? Wrong
shape, wrong everything.
Something very unusual here ...
must be an American warbler.
But which one?’ By this time I
had alerted Eugene and he was
snapping away furiously with his
camera.
Curiously, given all the empty
bushes we had been staring at
that morning, there was a second
bird in the same bush which also
looked quite yellowish, but was
clearly an Acrocephalus, one of the
local Sedge Warblers I supposed,
except that its back was veryAmerican Yellow Warbler: Mizen Head, Co Cork, 21-22 August 2017This year’s Cork bird was a rather bright first-winter female; some can be
quite drab looking, but this bird was already in possession of the more
lurid yellow tones that make adults so unmistakable.1710 p008-011 bigStories FIN.indd 9 15/09/2017 13: