11 year-old Thomas Spencer photographed rare grey phalarope while trying out his new Christmas present on Pembrokeshire beach

Wednesday 30 December 2015 / News

The Grey phalarope, pictured by 11 year-old
 Thomas Spencer at St Brides Beach.

AN 11 year-old boy has captured images of a rare bird while trying out a Christmas present.

Thomas Spencer went to St Brides Beach on Sunday (December 27) to get used to his new camera.

He noticed a lot of bird watchers on the beach who were trying to capture a shot of a rare grey phalarope.

The grey phalarope is seen around 200 times a year in the UK, with Birdwatch magazine recording previous sightings at Strumble Head.

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Rare wading bird seen on pond

First published Thursday 6 November 2014 in News

A RARE inland sighting of an arctic breeding wading bird, the grey phalarope, has been recorded on the largest of six new ponds which have recently been created on Dorset Wildlife Trust’s (DWT) Tadnoll and Winfrith reserve.

Classed as ‘scarce’ in the UK and rarely found so far inland, it is thought the stormy weather had encouraged the grey phalarope to feed on one of the newest ponds in the Prison Fields area on the reserve, just weeks after its creation.

The new ponds are proving a success for other wildlife too, as conservation officers have spotted green sandpipers, snipe and grey wagtails using the ponds.

Diving beetles, water beetles, lesser water boatmen and mating common darter dragonflies were also recorded just two weeks after the ponds were created.

Continued ...

Crocodile blocks twitchers from rare bird sighting at sewerage ponds

By Mark Di Stefano

Updated Thu 23 Jan 2014, 2:26pm AEDT

Bird watchers are furious at being blocked from a Darwin sewerage facility where a lost Arctic bird has been spotted, because a crocodile is lurking in the ponds.

The grey phalarope, with its dirty white feathers, has been floating around the Leanyer sewage facility for the last few days.

Local bird watchers do not know how it got to Darwin, as it usually breeds in the Arctic tundra and there have been no sightings of it in Australia for years.

Experts speculate it broke away from pack of the migrating birds and got lost.

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