Siberian Stonechat at Hollesley Marshes: Craig Shaw

Siberian Stonechat Saxicola maurus maurus at Hollesley Marshes December 1st 2019 into 2020

Craig Shaw

Finding it

So here I am sat in my new home in Hollesley starting my RSPB Garden Birdwatch and writing a piece on the finding of the Siberian Stonechat. Moving home is a stressful process, but birding and going out with the dogs, when not at work keeps me going. Unfortunately, winter is here, which is good for birds but not great for afterwork-birding due to its being dark. I have to make the most of the weekends and having a very good new patch helps. I’ve moved from Corton near Lowestoft, which is good for migrants and seawatching, but quite depressing for most of the year. Hollesley RSPB is the new patch with more water-based habitat, fields for geese and some seawatching still to be had, so it should hold some interest all-year-round and has certainly done that so far. Over 110 species in about 12 weeks!

Anyway, back to the Stonechat. I started straight away familiarising myself with the new patch, covering as much as possible on foot and finding some cracking habitat. Covering more of the site helps in getting lucky and finding that real goodie. However, I didn’t quite anticipate that it would happen after only two weeks!

On the morning of December 1st, I had covered the flash and started heading towards the river bank picking up two European Stonechats Saxicola rubicola. As I got further along the bank, another more-distant Stonechat caught my eye but this bird was extremely pale. It was pouring with rain so I waited and watched for a little time before getting the camera out and reeling off a few record shots. At this point I knew I had something very good; my thoughts were of the Eastern Stonechat that I had seen in Nottinghamshire and one I had seen at Caister in Norfolk in October 2015. I put out a couple of pictures to social media and sure enough, without prompting, people’s immediate reaction was that this bird was indeed an “Eastern” Stonechat.

Identification

The bird came much closer so I was able to pick out many of the usual features for a firstwinter bird such as the pale colouration, pale throat, un-streaked buffish rump and a tiny hint of a supercilium. This bird had to go out initially as an Eastern Stonechat; S. maurus and stejnegeri are the two we have had in the UK as visitors (only four stejnegeri up to the end of 2018) but separating the two in the field is almost impossible and so DNA was needed to separate them.

Luckily, in time, the warden of the site, Dave Fairhurst, was able to put up some posts with rails on top with the hope that birders could, if fortunate to spot it, collect faeces samples which could be sent off to Aberdeen for the extraction of DNA. This is done by Professor Martin Collinson and his team at the University of Aberdeen. The first batch was a failure as no DNA could be extracted. Fortunately, a second ‘batch’ of faeces was obtained and sent off. This did have extractable DNA which, when tested, resulted in a match coming back as Saxicola maurus maurus, Siberian Stonechat.

If seen at close range, and it often was, it could be seen that its primary remiges were distinctly longer than in S. rubicola. In this, it closely resembles the Whinchat S. rubetra, which, like S. maurus, is adapted to long-distance migration.

British and Suffolk occurrences

They are now annual in the UK, the species being a long distant migrant. However, this will be only the third accepted record for Suffolk, the previous two being at Trimley Marshes, which I remember seeing, in 2013 and Orfordness in 2015. There have been ten previous records, between 1977 and 2003, which remain as Eastern Stonechat. (There was no DNA testing of “Eastern Stonechats” until 2012 – the Portland Stejneger’s). The wintering range of this bird is from southern Asia, from Japan south to Thailand and India, and west to north-eastern Africa. On migration, small numbers reach as far west as western Europe – hence the Hollesley record. The breeding range covers most of Asia from eastern Turkey and the Ural River east to Siberia south to the Himalayas and southwestern China. It also breeds in the far northeast of Europe, mainly in Russia but occasionally as far west as Finland (Wikipedia).

Over the next five weeks, rolling into 2020, many birders came to see this stunning little bird and all of them should have gone away happy as it was seen almost every day, The car park at the reserve filled up regularly which I think is rather unusual for the site. January 5th (2020) was the last time it was seen.