News broke last weekend 6/7th November of two cracking birds at South Landing Flamborough; namely a Taiga Flycatcher and a Red-flanked Bluetail. Unfortunately due to personal circumstances I could not make any visits. As is often the case, migrants like this often disappear overnight due to the weather conditions. Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when the birds were still there after the weekend!!! But it wasn’t until Tuesday I could get over there, by then the flycatcher had gone; but the ‘Bluetail was still showing well – Twitch on!!! The bird was showing extremely well ; being very active in the tops of the sycamores and ash trees catching flies and gleaning small invertebrates from the underside of the trees’ leaves. Sometimes the bird would search the lower section of the trees, to the delight of the assembled birders, showing off its blue tail, distinct white eye-ring, orange flank patches and distinctive white throat patch. Often it would flick its tail and wings another characteristic that helped identify the bird when it was high up in the canopy. You couldn’t have asked for a better morning’s birding with good company and a cracking bird to photograph.
