Two-barred (Greenish Warbler) at Orford
Two-barred (Greenish) Warbler Phylloscopus plumbeitarsus October 13th 2019 at Orford A first for Suffolk Mark Cornish
The Two-barred Greenish Warbler, Orford Quay, Sunday 13th October 2019 - first for Suffolk and eighth for Britain. Photo taken by Sean Nixon at 12:25.
We all wait for autumn, however, with persistent strong winds of a westerly nature, it would be fair to say it had got to mid-October and autumn was flatly passing by without a lot of ornithological interest on the Suffolk coast. There had been Suffolk’s earliest-ever Pallas’s Warbler Phylloscopus proregulus (top-trumping a bird I’d found at East Lane in 2016 by four days), the normal scattering of Yellow-browed Warblers Phylloscopus inornatus , a couple of Barred Warblers Sylvia nisoria and some Ring Ouzels Turdus torquatus - and that was it really in a nutshell! There hadn’t been any real decent weather for seawatching and any scarce seabirds were confined solely to birds off East Lane and Thorpeness. I’d been pretty much laid up in bed for two days with, well not just the ‘man’ version, but actual flu - which wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as there were few birds about as previously mentioned and the weather wasn’t that enticing for cycling. However, on Sunday morning I felt a bit better and not wanting another day of moping around in my pants, sweating with achy limbs, was itching just to get outside for an hour or two. I decided to have a couple of hours birding without going too mad. Now I don’t stray far from the vicinity of the Alde Estuary these days and going to see a bird at Minsmere constitutes a major twitch in my eyes. So, it was a toss 47
