Ring Ouzel Fabulousness

Sometimes the stars just align...

I was in a coffee shop a few days ago, when I spotted a friend I hadn't seen for over a year.  Popping over to her table, we had a lovely natter.  Then she commented that it was very odd - she had only thought of me this morning when a strange bird had turned up in her garden.  I asked her about the bird...

"It was the size of a blackbird, just like a blackbird really, but had a big white patch on its chest.  I had a look in the bird books and I think it's a ringed ouzlett." She said.

Of course, up my heart-rate went, but I tried to keep calm and consider that it could just be one of our local leucistic blackbirds. "I have a dodgy picture that I can send to you, I took it on my phone."  She continued.  Heart rate a little higher.  The picture arrived an hour later.  Heart rate through the roof!

taken by my friend with her phone

She gave me her address and I hastily checked the boundary of the 100 area to see if it was tickable for the Warwick 100 list.  Ack!  about 100 yards outside.  Frustrating not to be able to get it on our list, but still a great record for Warwickshire (only the fifth ever winter rouzel, apparently).

I couldn't get away from work/life for a couple of days but, yesterday, I received a message to say he was in the garden again.  Having broken up from school for a mere ten minutes, I hotfooted it to the address and hid, shivering, in my kind friend's garden for an hour.   I'd only ever seen one ring ouzel before; on a birding trip to Dungeness some years ago, with Jack.  That one was flighty and a long distance away.  But here this one was, right above me in a rowan tree, an absolute beauty of a bird. He'd eat for a couple of minutes, fly off and return almost exactly eight minutes later.  

Hmmmm, I thought.  I wonder which direction he's flying in... 

A bit of following the flight path and peering down the road and my mood lifted even more - he was flying straight into the Warwick 100 area as part of his circuit!  Bird number 112 for the year and an amazing, if chilly hour spent.

Thanks so much to my non-birding friend for taking an interest and telling me about the 'strange' bird.  She doesn't want her address given out, so apologies to people who I know would want to have seen him.  But it just shows that some brilliant birds can turn up in the most unlikely of places!

  

taken by Lizzy