The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Subalpine Warblers in Lincolnshire:

Chris Atkin’s superb find on Sunday April 3rd 2011 ends a 15-year drought of records of this characteristic Mediterranean Sylvia in Lincolnshire. As this was only the 8th county record, compare with the much higher number of records in East Yorkshire, and the 500+ birds recorded in the UK and Ireland to 2008, it suggests that the species is certainly overlooked in the coastal scrub of Lincolnshire. To date only two birds have been present on more than one day and the number of observers remains a discreet club a are event in today’s information fuelled birding scene.

The first Lincolnshire record was of a singing male at Ingoldmells Point on May 11th 1970 (P Shooter). In a true purple patch of rarity finding at North Cotes another singing male was found and trapped on May 14th 1976 (P N Collin, A Grieve) in what turned out to be an amazing spring passage. Another five years passed before the next bird appeared close by along Commissioners Bank between Humberston and Tetney; this bird a fine male of the Eastern race S c albistriata was present for two days from May 12th – 13th 1981 and proved to be the only really twitchable bird in the county. (H Bunn, G P Catley, M Mellor). A female trapped twice at Gibraltar Point on May 7th and 14th 1983 (P R Boyer, R Lambert et al?) was not seen over the intervening period. A further short-staying singing male was at Pye’s Hall on May 23rd 1985 (M Mellor). Since then neither of the two subsequent trapped birds at Theddlethorpe, a male on June 28th 1994 and a female on September 15th 1996 (M & F Boddy) were available or as far as is known ever seen in the field.

The bird at Pyes’ Hall in 1985 was a Western Subalpine Warbler but apart from the 1981 bird none of the others have been assigned to race although all are by inference assumed to have been Western Subalpine.