As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Wednesday 7 December 2016

Eyebrowed thrush - rare sighting sparks twitcher stampede to Northumberland

Student Ross Moore spotted it first and when he posted pictures of it online birdwatchers flocked to the region

Student Ross Moore took a walk around a Northumberland beauty spot – and sparked a birding stampede.

Ross, who has just taken up wildlife photography, was walking around Bolam Lake Country Park on Friday afternoon with his parents when he photographed a bird perched in a nearby hawthorn tree.

His father Andrew trained his binoculars on the tree and concluded that it was a bird he had never seen before.

When they returned to the family home in Prudhoe, they identified it as an eyebrowed thrush, which breeds in Siberia and migrates for the winter to south East Asia.

Once Ross posted his pictures online, it sparked an internet surge from birders across the country.

“Everything went into meltdown, and it started to sink in about what I had stumbled across,,” said Ross.

It turned out to be the first eyebrowed thrush to be seen in Northumberland and only the 24th to be recorded in the UK, with the last bird accessible to spotters being back in 1995.



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