Pied Wheatear on The Wirral

Pied Wheatears in the past have been extremely hard to twitch with some being too distant and others just one or two day stayers.  So, when breaking news of one on the Wirral came up early last week and it remained a couple of days, a twitch was hastily arranged for Friday (if it decided to stick around).

As the week progressed, news came out that the bird was being fed mealworms which quite rightly attracted much criticism online.  Also, it turned out that the journey could be a nightmare with most of the M6 being at 50mph.  It was therefore possibly turning out that this might not be the nicest twitch of the year.  However, as Friday arrived and the news came out that the bird was still there, we departed from Redditch ,where I had picked up the others and it wasn't long before we were crawling up the M6 and the Squire was in his slumbers.

Despite the slowness of the journey, there were no holdups and we made good time that meant we arrived on site at about 11:30am.  As we pulled up, we saw the bird on the sea wall before even stopping - that has surely had to be the easiest twitch I have ever done by seeing a lifer without undoing my seatbelt.

The bird was extremely confiding, the crowd were well behaved and there were no signs of any mealworms anywhere - perfect!

   
We spent about 45 minutes with the bird and then decided to make our way home via Burton Mere RSPB arriving back in the Midlands late afternoon.