Round and round we go...

 

There has never been a MEGA on the patch, nor as far as I'm aware a genuine BBRC rarity, although prior to 2017, the above little chap, would have been. It's a Red-flanked Bluetail as many of you will know and this one's a female/immature... or, if you were me back on 3rd September 2010, a Common Redstart.

I had spotted it on the Prom,  the little pointy wedge of land sandwiched between Manchester Ship Canal and the River Mersey at Halfway House, wet through and transient. It was hard to see and it's tail didn't stand out as BLUE, so much as a dull greyish colour... at least to my eyes in the poor light. That, coupled with its bedraggled appearance and insistence of facing me on the few occasions it deemed to show itself among the remaining leaves, had me putting it down (quite joyfully as it happened, on account of the patch tick-y-ness of it...) as a female Common Redstart. 

But there was the breast and flank colouring and the eye-ring that didn't seem to fit. Even then, I managed to put it down the poor bird been wet and the feathers around its eye probably creating a bare-skin effect, and so for a few days I was content... until I was flicking through my Collin's and spotted it - immature Red-flanked Bluetail... and in that instance I had second thoughts. Was it really a Redstart... or in retrospect (a perfect art by the way...), was it a patch rarity at the time - an actual Red-flanked Bluetail? I was pretty sure it was, but too embarrassed to bring it up, put it down and forgot about it...until a few years later, when I saw that one had turned up just 'days' later on Hilbre Island! What were the odds? I see one up the Mersey and then days later a few miles further west at the river mouth, one is caught? Damn! So mine was seen on the 3rd and then the one on Hilbre was on the 16th. It certainly fitted! Except it didn't. Mine was seen on the 3rd of September... and the one on Hilbre was on the 16th or October... the following year! Worrisome how memory can play tricks on us... and so I'm left unsure. A quick check of Red-flanked Bluetail sightings across the years and UK don't help, but do suggest my original Redstart was the correct call. Why? Because most Bluetail sightings are from October onwards. Yes, some birds are seen in September, but pretty much all in the last week and none as early as the 3rd!

Ah well, still no rarities on the patch... guess we'll just have to make do with scarcities for now... mind you, Great Grey Shrike, Honey Buzzard, Black Kite, Golden Oriole, Ring-neck Duck, Ruddy Shelduck, Richard's Pipit etc aren't bad are they really... in the grand scheme of things ;)