Stejneger's Stonechat

In January 2017, Dave I visited  Dungeness twice and spent a good part of that time searching the area around the quarry for a suspected Siberian Stonechat, possibly a Stejneger's. We had checked the identification features but really had no idea if we would be able to identify the bird if we caught sight of it. 

We needn't have worried. We didn't manage to see it and although disappointed at the waste of time did have to smile when we subsequently found that DNA  analysis had shown it to be a European Stonechat. 

I had a sense of "deja vu" when another possible was reported at Medmerry. Researching the identification features again, left me with no more confidence than for the Dungeness bird, that I would be able to make the identification. Did I really want to spend time looking for one Stonechat, amongst a lot of other Stonechats, that I probably wouldn't recognise as being anything out of the ordinary anyway.

I left it a couple of days but in the end I had to go. It was on my patch and it would help heal the open wound left by the failure at Dungeness.

 

The directions to the thistle Field were easy to follow and there were already four or five people watching when I arrived. All very promising but the downside was that there were a lot of Stonechats in the field and it was a very bright morning. Not the sort for looking for subtle differences in feather hues let alone trying to get a photograph of them.

After a couple of false starts I did manage to pick up one bird that looked different. It looked more like a Whinchat with strong supercilium's but with a broad white throat. Further observation showed that overall the bird looked paler than those around it with less colour on the belly and with an unstreaked apricot rump.

Viewed from other angles the supercillium barely showed up and at times I thought I was getting two different birds mixed up. You had to follow it until the angle changed and the white reappeared.

To me it looked a good candidate and other more experienced birders had similar views. Clearly it stood out from the other European Stonechats around it but was the variation within the limits of the European species? More worrying, would I have just written it of as another Stonechat if I hadn't been told that it was there.

A DNA sample had been collected the day before and the only way the bird will be accepted is on the basis of this sample. 

Watch this space............ The news is not good, no DNA could be extracted from the sample so it doesn't count. Looked good at the time though.