Twitchers from around Britain descended on a tiny island to get a rare glimpse of a lost American bird. It is just the fourth recorded instance of a Blackburnian warbler being spotted in the UK.
The young male is thought is thought to have been blown off course over the Atlantic as it migrated from North to South America. It ended up on Bryher, one of the smallest inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly.
The sighting brought hundreds of birding enthusiasts to the island. The twitchers stood for hours to watch the bird, wading through water to get what are the most detailed images taken of a Blackburnian warbler in the UK.
Richard Stonier, 47, a chartered accountant who photographs birds in his spare time, spent eight hours across two days photographing the intrepid warbler. He said: “It was quite challenging actually because it has got quite unique feeding characteristics.
"The warblers we get on this side of the world flit about from one branch to another. This one was more walking and leaping about across twigs, almost like a mouse."
The Blackburnian warbler breeds in the eastern United States and Canada but spends winter in South America. The only previous known sightings in the UK have been on St Kilda in 2009, Fair Isle in 1998 and Skomer in 1961.
Mr Stonier said: “It’s an extreme rarity. It’s only the fourth time ever it has been seen in the UK, the previous three times have all been inaccessible.
“It got caught up in one of those storms and was blown across the Atlantic. Most don’t make it. It’s not a water bird, it wouldn’t have had any food.
“If it tries to fly back it is extremely unlikely it will make it, but it might not know where it is, it might try to migrate south. No one really knows what happens to these American birds once they’re here, they show up and then disappear again.”
Mr Stonier paid tribute to another birder, Johhn Judge, who first spotted the warbler and got the word out. “This is a fantastic reward for years of hard work and effort," he said.
"He found it, identified it, and put the word out on the birdwatching information services and now everyone has twitched it. People were arriving from the Shetlands when I was there yesterday.”
