Soil Hill

Well today my greatest birding dream came to pass; a Soil Hill Yellow-browed Warbler!

From first light I found myself doing VizMig from my usual vantage point near the bottom of the North Slope. It was quite slow but the conditions were bright with a gentle SSE breeze, and there was a slow trickle of birds to keep the interest, despite the lack of serious numbers in what seemed like promising conditions.

At 08:05 I caught a couple of calls in the North Slope Tree-Line which I thought sounded like Yellow-browed Warbler. So certain was I of what I heard that I felt my hands shaking at the prospect of finding this species on my patch. I tried looking for the source of the call I had heard but my search found nothing except the species I had noticed earlier in the morning; Chiffchaffs, Blue Tit & a flock of Goldfinch of various ages, so I dismissed the calls I thought I had heard as an odd variation from one of the species above.

Then, at 08:20 I heard the call again and from my location I could see a Chiffchaff emerge from the bushes in pursuit of a smaller bird. The smaller bird was chased into an area of nettles and scrub away from the main Tree-Line, and I set off in pursuit. I was now confident that I had a Yellow-browed Warbler on my hands but as I walked down towards the vegetation where the bird had landed, it flew out and returned to the Tree-Line. On its flight back I managed to rattle off a few quick photos, which, although poor, showed the two wing bars and bright supercilium confirming the identification as Yellow-browed Warbler.

Once it had returned to the North Slope Tree-Line the bird became elusive and was difficult to track. For the first time I was able to locate it, the bird was feeding on the near edge of the Tree-Line and showing reasonably well, but was always mobile and once lost it could take some time to relocate. As the morning wore on, it spent more time on the far side of the North Slope Tree-Line where viewing was far more difficult. Despite occasionally disappearing for up to half an hour at a time, it would still show nicely at times, feeding in the mid-story and at the top of the bushes.

Strangely the bird was very quiet, only calling on its own accord once, otherwise calling only when receiving harassment from one of the three Chiffchaffs in the same area. It kept its own company, and despite the presence of a small tit-flock that would circulate the bottom of the North Slope area, it did not join them. Despite trying, I was not able to get an audio recording due to this infrequency of calls.

In total, I spent about two hours with the bird, although it was missing for at least half of this time. No other birders came to view the bird while I was with it, although I know of a few others who visited during the afternoon, finding it still in the same area.

This was the species I had most wanted to find on Soil Hill, but no matter how I imagined it, I still could not quite believe that it actually happened.

-Yellow-browed Warbler

Species List:

Soil Hill: Greylag Goose, Canada Goose, Mallard, Goosander, Common Pheasant, Feral Pigeon, Stock Dove, Common Wood Pigeon, Common Moorhen, Common Snipe, Black-headed Gull, Common Gull, European Herring Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Common Kestrel, Eurasian Magpie, Western Jackdaw, Rook, Carrion Crow, Eurasian Blue Tit, Great Tit, Eurasian Skylark, Yellow-browed Warbler, Common Chiffchaff, Goldcrest, Eurasian Wren, Common Starling, Mistle Thrush, Common Blackbird, European Robin, Dunnock, Grey Wagtail, Pied Wagtail, Meadow Pipit, Eurasian Chaffinch, European Greenfinch, Common Linnet, European Goldfinch, Common Reed Bunting,