On the 9th of September an adult Green Warbler was trapped and ringed at Buckton, Yorkshire. This bird represented the 9th record for Britain and the first twitchable one on the British mainland. We were driving back from our weeks holiday in Cornwall on the 10th and so the 11th would be my first opportunity to twitch it.
I made arrangements with Alan Shaw to go on the Saturday morning on first news, working on the basis that it would remain there all day if still on site. Sure enough it was and we set off around 07:45 arriving at Bempton Cliffs at around 10am. A short walk to Buckton and a wait of several hours before it put in an appearance. Although a little distant, for the assembled crowd, this rare asian phyllosc showed well, briefly and long enough to get a few record shots and to view all the salient features.
It reminded me of a Wood Warbler with a delicate wing bar. A relatively recent split from Greenish and Two-barred Greenish Warblers, sightings of Green Warbler in Britain have been confined to the outer islands, with the exception of one at Church Cove on the Lizard in Cornwall, in June 2019.
Note the overall green appearance with a lemon yellow flush to the face, throat upper breast and supercilium. White under-tail coverts and under belly. A very fine single whitish wing bar on the greater wing coverts.
