A river runs through it

With the obvious issues we have this year, I'm trying to focus on lifers rather than just adding to my year list. With a bit of luck I should get to 400 on the UK400 list this year, and on the stricter BOU list next year, so it's worth the effort.

So, on Friday when a mega rare popped up it certainly piqued my interest. The bird in question was a river warbler - a locustella warbler, related to the Savi's and grasshoppers warblers. The last truly switchable one was over 10 years ago, so out of my targets and a blocker to be cleared off. It was showing really well throughout Saturday so there was no choice, an early start on Sunday.

The bird was at Ham Wall in Somerset, near Glastonbury. I've already had some good birds there - pied-billed grebe, little bittern and Hudsonian godwit to name but three. It was very early start to beat the half-term traffic and by just gone 7 I was pulling into the car park. The river warbler was already on RBA as calling from the path to Avalon Hide.

I grabbed my gear, foregoing breakfast or coffee and headed off for the 10 minute walk. It was a short walk to the area where about 15 birders were staring at some reeds.

Ham Wall is a very large reedbed - brilliant for bitterns, great white and cattle egrets and all their allied friends. I got a great white (year tick) walking to the twitch.

Even as I walked up I could hear the bird calling -or singing more accurately. It is a locustella (like a locust) so makes a long, repetitive, call more like an insect than bird. 

Before, when I've seen Savi's or grasshopper warblers then tend to be loud but skulking. This one was half-right. It was very loud but it was very showy. Sitting about 30 yards away it had a favourite series of perches from it would call incessantly for minutes on end.

Now this bird should really be in Russia, east Germany or the near Asian states, certainly not here. It is calling to try and find a mate. The chance of that happening is vanishingly small. This led to a conversation amongst us that we felt sorry for the bird. It was putting in a monumental effort with low or no chance of success. I would guess that for the two hours I was there it was visible for 90% of the time and singing for most of that.

When it sings, it just opens its beak and noise comes out, rather than open and closing to modulate the notes. Only occasionally did it stop to either feed out of sight in the reeds or to sit looking rather dejected by its lack of success.

I stayed almost two hours, but the light was pretty poor and the crowd was growing. With everyone being well behaved they were queuing to get the good slots to see the bird so I packed up and headed back. 

A cracking bird, showing stupidly well. A nice twitch as well, catching up with a few old faces and some new ones as well. Despite the slow start this year is turning out quite well.