
American beauties
Many of you may remember the slate-coloured junco that spent a couple of days in a garden in the Scottish Borders in spring 2017, only the eighth record for the UK. And in 2015, a family garden near Dungeness became the sight of an Acadian flycatcher twitch!
And birders the UK-over were green with envy when a man in Pembrokeshire spotted a green heron lurking in his garden while he was mowing the lawn in 2018.
Two schoolchildren hit the birding jackpot when they recorded a yellow-rumped warbler as part of their Big Garden Birdwatch in 2014. Finder Emily Power, 12 at the time, said: “We saw a small bird with a flash of yellow and couldn’t figure out what it was, even when we looked at our chart of what to expect. Our Mum took a picture and showed it to expert RSPB staff at the Saltholme reserve who identified it as a yellow-rumped warbler, we were shocked that such a rare bird would come to our normal garden in Co Durham.”
Emily and her brother nicknamed their rare guest “flora butterbum”.
In 2020, another Big Garden Birdwatcher had a Siberian lesser whitethroat in their Essex garden, nibbling at their bird feeder. And looking to the east, in 2016 an oriental turtle dove delighted one Kent birder who got some cracking views of the shy bird from his house.