News of a Swift with a white rump at Hornsea Mere, Yorkshire around 4-25pm on Sunday afternoon had a few phones ringing. What followed, with regards to the birds true identification was pure comedy. This is no reflection on the finders or the other observers on site watching the bird. It went, Possible Pacific Swift, possible White rumped Swift then, possibly both? finally at 5-37pm it was identified as White rumped Swift. As most of our group had seen Pacific Swift there seemed to be no urgency, so when the true identification was finalised there was no time to do a quick dash over to Hornsea Mere. Even knowing that most of the members of the swift family usually move on very quickly overnight, we still arranged to go to Hornsea Mere on Monday morning.
At 5-30am on a dark Monday morning myself, Kevin C set off from Rochdale with Bob K driving, we made good progress and soon found lots of other birders cars parked along the road at the south side of the mere. It felt cool and it was raining, its usually at moments like this you question yourself as to why we do it? Anyway, we joined the group of around 100 other birders and began to search the skies hoping that the swift would put in an appearance. Standing around in these conditions can take its toll on people and after a couple of hours past by, a lady birder collapsed. An ambulance was called and she was taken away for further treatment. Lets hope she makes a full recovery.
After seeing: - Scaup, House Martins, Marsh Harrier, Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Kestrel but no White rumped Swift in the three plus hours we were present, we decided to return to the car for a warming drink and sustenance. On the journey home news that the bird had been seen flying over Spurn at around 2pm, didnt really cheer us all up. It was later revealed that the bird seen at Spurn could have been a House Martin???
The joys of being a twitcher are not always about success, because if you saw every bird you went for you would soon get bored, or would you?
