Eastern Black Redstart

I had a day off yesterday and despite feeling a bit under the weather I decided I'd go see the Eastern Black Redstart at Sheringham. Being a sub species I've never really bothered to twitch one before despite there having been some twenty plus records. 

Eastern Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros phoenicuroides) is a bird that inhabits Asia with a range creeping into Eastern Europe so to find one on our shores is quite remarkable and with this one being around two hours from home I thought I would try for it. The Jims were otherwise busy being Christmas and all that so it was a solo run. There was a police incident on the A11 that caused me to divert around Thetford but otherwise the journey was fine. I decided to stop at Ludham seeing that it would make a shorter original travel plan and pulled into the car park before first light to find the car park had just one space left. Walking along the river bank I could see the twitch in the distance and hurried along to join it. With news that the bird had roosted last night the "presumed" bushes had been staked out but as the light came up there was no sign of the Black-winged Kite. By about 8.30 the mood had dipped until somebody picked up the Kite hovering in the distance some way west of us. For the next hour or so we watched as it hunted and sat up in distant trees before it eventually was lost to view. My second Black-winged Kite in Norfolk following the Hickling bird of July 2023. (The same bird? I wonder.)

I got back in the car and made the 25mile journey north to Sheringham parking up on the promenade where the news wasn't good as the bird had gone missing just before I arrived but within a couple of minutes it appeared on the sea wall and then moved down onto the beach to feed among the stones and on the wood groynes before heading back up and away into the buildings behind the promenade. Luckily there is a shingle road behind the buildings and I managed to find the bird sitting high on a gutter where it would stay for about an hour resting between the gutter, the warm boiler flue and the window cills. After an hour it got active again and would drop to feed on the floor a few feet from us and would take regular trips to bath in a garden out of site. I don't like these residential twitches which always feel a bit intrusive although we did everything we could to not be and I have to say every single local that came out of the houses showed nothing but interest in the hobby and the bird.

I headed home satisfied that I'd added my 250th year tick (including the Green winged Teal they stripped me of but not the Eastern Black Redstart of course which at this point has never been a full species but maybe one day one of these splits will go my way ) but by the time I arrived home the man flu had got into me so it was an early night and a good rest up to recover for new years day if I can.

Year list 249 (plus GWT=250 😉)

The very distant Black-winged Kite

BOU updates

So the recent IOC/BOU updates have now been loaded up into Bubo where I store my bird lists.

The result means I have lost three life ticks.

Hooded Crow is now lumped with Carrion Crow 

Green-winged Teal is now considered to be the sub species of Teal 

Stejneger's Stonechat is now considered Siberian Stonechat.

So the impact takes my official BOU life list to 452 but I keep a seperate list which includes the birds seen whilst a full species and this list includes ...

Hooded Crow (Corvus Cornix)

Green-winged Teal (Anas Carolinensis)

Stejneger's Stonechat (Saxicola Stejnegeri) (Also refferred to as Amur Stonechat)

Steppe-Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor pallidirostris)

Mealy Redpoll (Acanthis  flammea)

Coues's Arctic Redpoll (Acanthis flammea exilipes)

Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll (Acanthis hornemannii)

So this list totals 459 (throw in the other 16 sub species* seen and the total is now 474)

A Crow

A Siberian Stonechat (that was DNA tested as Stejneger's)

A Teal with another Teal

The impact of these removals affects the year list in which they were seen too which I find frustrating as they were full species when seen and they are also removed from the various county lists I keep. 

My biggest loss is in the 2019 list where I pushed myself to see 303 bird species on the mainland and that record now stands at 299 having lost a total of four birds now considered sub species since 2019 which I had seen in that total of 303.

* (the other16 sub species)

Blue headed Wagtail, Black headed Wagtail, Chanel Wagtail, Chanel Wagtail, Horned Lark, American Black Tern, Black Brant, Pale-bellied Brent, Black-bellied Dipper, Todd's Canada Goose, Kumliens Gull, Northern Long-tailed Tit, Siberian Chiffchaff, Scandi Rock Pipit, the two White-fronted Goose species/sub species, the two Bluethroats, 

   

Black-bellied Dipper at Bintree Mill in Norfolk

I headed up the A11 to Lynford this morning and enjoyed a couple of hours strolling about searching for Crossbill. I saw four groups of Crossbill and counted a total of 47 species which included an odd record of flyover Golden Plover. I was about to do a second circuit when I checked my phone to find the Black-bellied Dipper at Bintree Mill Norfolk had been seen so I decided to jump in the car and do the extra 20 miles for hoping I might connect with it. This Dipper was first seen on 3rd December but not reported again until 17th so a two week gap in sightings and again went missing for three days until this morning when it showed well pretty much all day.

On arrival the bird was in view and another birder let me look through his scope for an easy year tick. Over the next two hours the bird would fly under the bridge on a few occasions but remained quite distant although I did manage to get a few images. Eventually the bird flew off but was relocated in front of the mill and again allowed a couple of images at distance. Some of the big lens guys probably got better shots but I was happy to see it. This is my second Norfolk Dipper following the North Walsham bird of 2018. I've also seen Dark-bellied Dipper at Thetford, Suffolk in 2013. 

Bintree Mill was a beautiful venue to be looking for a Dipper in Norfolk and gave me my second year tick of the day after the Crossbills. The owner of the mill came out for a chat and invited a few of us onto his land to search for the bird which was good of him. I added just three more birds to the day list which now totalled 50 species.

Bintree Mill

Year list now 249

2025 review

Reflecting on the year almost over where I said a sad fairwell to my Father in law after the passing of my Mother in law back in November 2024. Following his passing I had the unenviable task of helping to sort out first the funeral then the double internment, followed by the very emotional role of clearing the family home. With all this ongoing my daughter in law fell ill and began a years course of ongoing treatment and I've found myself quickly filling the time I recovered from caring for my father in law with helping my son deal with things at his end, running around making sure my grandchildren don't miss out and generally helping tick over whilst my daughter in law deals with the battle ahead. Suzanne continues her pain management journey and despite more MRI scans we seem to be limited to trying to live with the pain rather than dealing with any root cause of the pain she suffers. So with all that in mind it has been a strange year for birding although when I have got out I've still enjoyed the hobby apart from dealing with any guilt feelings that I could be at home doing more to help my loved ones. Added to all this Dad and Jim have there own issues restricting them too so as a group we've found it more difficult to find the free days together resulting in more solo runs than in most years.

Allowing for the above I managed to add five new birds to my Life list with the Booted Eagle in Kent, Britains first breeding Zitting Cisticolas in Suffolk after dipping one in Kent, Black faced Bunting at Spurn and the Lesser crested Tern in Devon. I also managed to add Scops Owl with a visit to Swansea to lay to rest the Durham dip of 2017. I dipped just the one new bird and that was the Song Sparrow at Bempton and notably I saw my second ever Hudsonian Godwit too.

Scops Owl

Black-faced Bunting at Spurn

Hudsonian Godwit

My Life list stands at 455 but I expect to lose Hooded Crow and Green-winged Teal at some point when they're lumped. The bogey bird remains Tawney Pipit. (Update the lumping happened and I actually lost three (Stejneger's Stonechat, Hooded Crow and Green-winged Teal) so the life list is now 452.)

The pointless year list was 249 and not my worst despite having such limited time to enjoy the hobby. I found hours out rather than days out to keep things ticking over more so in the spring than this autumn.

I added Arctic Warbler and Dotterel to my Essex List (284) and added five to my Suffolk list (284) with the Cisticola, Black Stork, Tree Sparrow, Red-tailed Shrike and Brown Shrike. Kent (273) saw just one addition with the Booted Eagle. My local patch list grew with the addition of Green-winged Teal, Dunlin and Red-breasted Merganser. (169) and I added five to my Herts list (187) Pec Sand, Night-Heron, Baikal Teal, Black Redstart and Yellow-browed Warbler. The Norfolk list, London area list  and garden list didn't move.

Black Stork

Brown Shrike

Turkestan Shrike

Outside of Essex birding was limited to more local trips to Cambridgeshire (4) Suffolk (7) Herts (5) Kent (2) Surrey (2) Buckinghamshire, Norfolk (3) and longer runs to Yorkshire (Bempton and Spurn), Devon for the Lesser crested Tern twitch and just the one venture into Wales for the Scops Owl. (Just 28 days where I ventured out of Essex for birding)

The best bird in terms of its rarity would have to be the Booted Eagle I suppose although Britains first breeding Cisticola gives it a run. In terms of best bird to photograph I suppose that would be the Black Stork but I also enjoyed the Phalarope on the local reservoir, the Glossy Ibis on the local meadow and the time at Landguard with a Purple Sandpiper and Snow Buntings amongst others depicted below.

Snow Bunting

Grey Phalarope

Stonechat

Purple Sandpiper

Tree Sparrow

Gannet

Glossy Ibis

Spotted Sandpiper

Great Reed Warbler

Little Ringed Plover

Little Owl

Tundra Bean Goose

Long-billed Dowitcher

Glaucous Gull

So on reflection 2025 was a challenging year for me personally, thankful for the support I've had from the family and grateful for every moment I get with my grandchildren and for the satisfaction and enjoyment I still get from birding, long may that all continue.

So in 2025 the only real missed opportunities that were twitchable and within my limited travel range were Grey Headed Lapwing (Northumberland), Eastern Bonellis Warbler (Dungeness) and the Eastern Subalpine Warbler that spent three days in Filey and my only excuse for not getting any of these is that I was just too busy at the time to go for them. 

 UPDATE 29TH DECEMBER 2025: I added Black winged Kite to the year list and saw my first ever Eastern Black Redstart at Sheringham

Eastern Black Redstart

Scops Owl in Swansea

Scops Owl has been a bird I've thought about seeing since I was a child. In 2017 one was found in Durham so I drove up and managed to dip it. The day I went down to Kent for the Yellow Warbler last year saw a Scops Owl reported in Kent but I was already back home when news came out and I couldn't make the time to drive back down for it. Over the next few days reports kept coming but I just couldn't find either the time or the motivation so roll on to this week when another was found in Swansea I had one eye on it and eagerly awaited a free day which finally came on Thursday so I arranged with Jim that we'd head over to Swansea (just the four hour drive away) take some time on the cliffs trying to year tick Chough, check a river or two for Dipper and then later we'd head over to the park at Killay and see if we could get lucky with the Scops Owl.

We set off around 9 and had no trouble getting into Swansea where we checked a couple of likely spots for Dipper but with the recent rains our chosen spots were not productive so we moved on to Pennard where we had a couple of views of Chough as they flew along the cliff tops before we headed back to Killay and parked up at the park. We walked down to meet with the other birders and waited. The crowd grew to around thirty and a local guy came to meet us and talk about how the twitch would be conducted. It was agreed that we'd wait until 6pm then split the group for a wider search using the four thermal imagers present. My group walked towards the barriers where the bird had been seen the previous day and sure enough the bird was picked up in the thermal straight away. Messages went out quick to the other three groups and all thirty birders managed to see the bird. A torch was used responsibly to shine the area just below the bird allowing for it to be illuminated just enough for everybody to see it. Over the next hour or so the bird was located three times using the thermals and again illuminated with low light for 30 seconds every fifteen minutes to allow for views to those not lucky enough to have thermal imagers. After the hour of viewing most birders left and hopefully the bird was allowed to continue to feed.

How news travels

The twitch

The torch light on the floor illuminating the bird enough to view

Area the bird was first seen around 6pm

Pennard

Duvant park

Scops Owl

A fantastic bird and a decent twitch, well marshalled by the local guys.

Life list now 455

year list now 247

In case you couldn't see the bird 🤣