Rare bird sighting draws in 150 twitchers

TWITCHERS flocked to Attenborough Nature Centre after an extremely rare bird sighting. Sean Browne spotted the penduline tit in the reed beds at Clifton Pond at about 1pm on Friday, November 28.

It was only the second recorded Notts sighting of the bird which is usually more at home in Mediterranean countries.

Word quickly spread in the bird-watching community and by 7am the following day a scrum of about 150 people turned up with their binoculars to catch a glimpse.

The bird – which has a grey head and a distinctive black 'mask' around its eyes – was again seen between 8.30am and 10am that day, moving between the reed beds and the Dragonfly Pond, but then disappeared and has not been seen since.

Mr Browne, 52, of Chilwell, said it was a dream to spot a rare bird. "I was just scanning through some of the reed buntings in the reed bed and its head popped out," he said. "It is such a distinctive bird I knew what it was straight away.

"I was desperate to get a photo of it because the only other Notts sighting was also at Attenborough and that was in 1994 and was only seen by one person.

"They have never been proven to have bred in this country before and I think there have only been half a dozen inland records of this bird ever in the country.

"It was one of those moments every birder dreams of. It is a bit of a reward for all the times you go down and don't find much at all."

Tim Sexton, duty manager at the nature centre, said he immediately ran down to the reed bed with a pair of binoculars. He said it was a great boost for the site, which is managed by Notts Wildlife Trust.

"The following day I arrived to see the bird again and I was followed by about 150 bird watchers. Word had got around on a website called birdguides.com. Some people sign up on websites to get pager messages when there is a rare sighting. People I spoke to had come from as far as Liverpool."

Mr Sexton said the only previous Notts sighting was also at the centre. "It shows the management we have been doing has been successful. The first was found by Chris Mills about 15 years ago and before the age of mobile phones he ran to a nearby house to use their phone but when he came back it had gone.

"So he was the only one to have seen it previously, but it was still accepted by the British Bird Records Committee as a genuine record."

The reed bed where the latest sighting occurred was created in 2000, and since then a number of rare bird sightings have been made.

Thousands of bird watchers came to see the North American sora rail when it over-wintered at the reserve in 2003/04.