TRUMPETER FINCH  May 21st 2005

 

On Saturday 21st May 2005, I had arranged to meet up with Justin Zantboer and Nathaniel Cant at 0545hrs at the entrance to Trimley Marshes. Here, I jumped in Justin’s VW Passat and enjoyed the luxury of the drive down to the reception centre. We spent the next two hours checking the various pools and lagoons with very little reward. Whilst sitting in the reservoir hide, Justin heard a Hoopoe call twice; unfortunately for Nathaniel and myself neither of us heard it as we were sitting at the other end of the hide! We spent the next 30 minutes looking for the Hoopoe to no avail. From Trimley, we decided to head for Landguard Bird Observatory, on arrival, the general feeling from those already present was that there wasn’t much about and the ringing team had only caught 2 birds all morning, we chatted leisurely over a cuppa within the ringing compound to kill some time and decide on our next move.

From my watch point I started to scan the common and soon picked up a couple of Wheatears down by the sea hide, it was here I noticed a pale looking finch-type bird sitting amongst the sea cabbage, although the bird was over 300 yards away I had a suspicion that the bird was a Trumpeter Finch! I grabbed Nathaniel and insisted he look through my Swarovski scope, he also suggested that it looked very interesting, my pulse rate was now increasing with every second as, despite having no previous experience of the species, I knew that the feature’s that I could see fitted in well with Trumpeter Finch! Panic then set in and everyone was grabbing whatever scope was available to look at this bird. Although I suspected the bird to be a Trumpeter Finch given the distance involved we had to get nearer to rule out the possibility of a potential cage bird, six of us set off commando style from the ringing compound and headed towards the common leaving 3 behind keeping a close eye on the bird just in case it flew off. Once on the common, I was superbly guided in by Justin to the bird’s location as he stayed up on top and within a couple of minutes the bird was re-located amongst the sea cabbage. Over the next few minutes, Nigel Odin, Paul Holmes, Paul Oldfield, Mark Ferris, Justin Zantboer, Nathaniel Cant and myself obtained good views of the bird as it fed with 2 Linnet’s within the roped off area where the Ringed Plovers were nesting, after noting all the salient feature’s we were all happy with the bird’s identification and it was at this point that I rang Roy Marsh, James Brown and LGRE of the find, Justin called Chris Batty at RBA and it wasn’t long before the familiar MEGA bleeping sound was coming from my pager that was in my pocket. We carried on watching the bird for a further 15 minutes before the first troop of birders started to arrive, within the first hour most of Suffolk’s big guns had connected with the bird and it was a great addition to both their County and Life lists.

At first it was almost impossible to obtain any notes or take any photos of the bird due to my mobile phone being red-hot and the fact that my battery on the coolpix had packed up! However, Will Brame kindly lent me his spare battery and I was able to obtain some decent shots of the bird as it continued to perform well to the ever-increasing crowd.

The bird itself appeared to be plumper and bulkier than the two Linnets it was associating with, the wings to the bird were rather long and the dark primary tips contrasting with the sandy warm grey-brown upperparts. The head to the bird was rather big, complete with a short, stubby heavier looking bill, which was a mixture of orangey/red in coloration, which also showed some dark areas; a narrow pale eye-ring surrounding a large dark eye was also very evident on the bird. When the bird was standing on the concrete blocks the flesh coloured legs could be clearly seen and there was no sign of any rings and all claws were present! Also at this stage I was able to see the rump well, which was pinkie tinged in colouration, particularly noticeable when in flight. The underparts of the bird were quite similar to that of the upperparts, being a warm sandy-brown colour. On several occasions the bird flew around the gathered crowd on the southern end of the common, as it did, it was heard to call on several occasions being a short nasally single note ‘chee’.

This bird constitutes the 2nd record for Suffolk following an individual that at the time was a first for Britain which was found at Minsmere on 30th May 1971, and stayed until 15th June, and it also turns out to be the 8th record for Britain and proved to be the first twitchable bird since the Sussex individual at Church Norton back in 1984 which stayed for 5 days.

On the day of the finding (Saturday 21st May 2005), it was estimated that over 2000 birders had travelled to Landguard to see this Trumpeter Finch that performed well for all those to see and it is reported that as many as 5000 birder’s had seen the bird by the end of Monday 23rd May 2005. Thankfully, all birders that visited Landguard Bird Observatory during the bird’s lengthy stay were well behaved and respected the advice from the staff of Landguard Bird Observatory.

Over the years I have found some decent birds in the county, but nothing to the magnitude of this find. It was an extraordinary experience of being the finder and I really appreciate all the praise and thanks that I received that morning from my many friends and birding colleagues and was greatly delighted that the bird stayed long enough to be seen by many hundreds of birders. Finally, I owe a big thank you to my birding buddies Justin Zantboer and Nathaniel Cant and the team at Landguard Bird Observatory for all their help and guidance in securing this mega of a bird, well done boys!

Lee G Woods.