About 2 weeks ago news filtered through various birding grapevines and news services of an extremely rare bird visiting the shores of mainland Britain. This bird, so rare that it has only been seen once before in the U.K. and that was over 13 years ago, was found on a small RSPB reserve near Weymouth called Lodmoor. Initially identified as a Long-billed Dowitcher, this bird was eventually seen to be the much rarer Short-billed Dowitcher, a very similar looking bird, but different in a couple of small areas. Obviously, the bill is shorter, but still extremely long and not much use to the likes of me unless the two birds would be standing next to eachother. The other, crucial I.D. feature is that this bird had barred tertial feathers, showing it to be a juvenile Short-billed Dowitcher, the Long-billed has plain tertial feathers.
Two mad individuals, myself and my friend Chris Orders decided to go for this 'mega' and found ourselves at Lodmoor at 6.30 in the morning after having driven through the night. The bird was present, feeding distantly with a Common Snipe and putting on a fantastic show. We stayed for two hours to take this bird in, the rarest bird that I have ever seen in this country, both taking photographs, me with my 'Bridge' camera (my digiscoping gear seems to have gone kapput!) and Chris with his digiscoping set-up. The light never seemed to be right, on arrival it was too dark and when the sun did get up it started to bleach everything out, but below are a selection of stills and a couple of videos. Enjoy.
All the above photos and videos were taken by me (the best of a bad bunch).
Copyright Chris Orders
A real 'mega' twitch for a 'mega' bird, but not the end of the story as another 'mega' was seen by us, this time by journeying to Essex, but that is for another time.
