Tuesday 21 May 2013

Uber mega rarity - dusky thrush - in Margate Cemetery

There have been only nine previous instances of a dusky thrush being spotted in the UK over the past 100 or so years.  So not really a bird you'd expect to appear mere yards from where you're sitting down and having a breather in good old Margate cemetery.

The pics are pretty poor - taken on a day when I didn't have Bigmos with me, I had to use my 70-200 with 2x teleconverter and was at f5.6 to boot, which tends to produce soft images.

I got my snaps just as the sun went in.  This little bird seemed perfectly happy to have me nearby and continued grubbing about for food on the ground as I tried to work out what it was.  I could unquestionably have got much better pictures had I known she was such a rarity.  She flew up into a tree when I got a bit too close but later went back down to hunt for more food.  But shortly afterwards I spotted a fox cub and went off trying to get a few snaps of that.

Imagine my surprise when I read online that a couple of days after these snaps were taken, well over 1000 twitchers descended on the cemo hoping to catch a glimpse of this very bird...







1 comment:

  1. That cemetery certainly seems a good place for spotting

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