Brian's birding blog: Alpine Accentor at Slaughden in Suffolk

Friday, 28 October 2022

Alpine Accentor at Slaughden in Suffolk

News broke yesterday of an Alpine Accentor being found by Mark C on or around the Martello towers at Slaughden beach near Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The first reports were around 1.30pm which would usually have given me plenty of time to travel but yesterday I was on grandad duty, and it was impossible to travel so I watched the news in envy all afternoon but was pleased to see reports that the bird had roosted on a pipe of the tower. I called the Jims and arranged to travel up to be on site at 7am today with sunrise scheduled for 7.40am I assumed if the bird had stayed, we'd at least see it leave the roost.

We arrived at 6.55 and walked up to the tower in darkness to find around thirty birders on site and reports that a thermal imager had picked up a heat source on top of the pipe which was promising. Within ten minutes with the light improving, we could make out the shape of the Accentor on the pipe but by 7.15 it had a big stretch flew up onto the wall of tower then flew off around the back of the tower and out of sight.

The Martello towers

The enthusiastic scrum

It took around 40 minutes to locate the bird again. It was a bit of a scrum and I found myself at the back and although I managed to see the bird the views were poor until a guy next to me with a better placement let me look through his scope. When the crowd moved, I remained distant with three others and eventually had a magical reward when the bird flew back down the beach landing on the large boulders briefly before flying up onto the path close to me. Better still it then walked towards me giving views down to about ten feet or less. Quickly the crowd gathered around the four of us, but the bird seemed unconcerned and continued to feed giving everybody the opportunity to enjoy it.