Unbelievable - I never ever would have thought it !! Having nailed Great Grey Shrike and Ring Ouzel on the Shropshire heights, I was hoping for something special today!
The weather was holding as I got to the summit and lo and behold a male Snow Bunting - storming bird too going into Summer plumage..
The weather in Scotland is vile, spare a though for the folks up there.... and of course the birds!! Many reports of Ptarmigan flying south and with hopes high I couldn't believe my luck - just below the trig point....
Could Shropshire birding ever get any better, I'm still pinching myself - an amazing start to the month of April!!
Then the backfire...
What started off as an April 1st wind up backfired a little bit…….
With Polar Bears, Eagles and Unicorns turning up all over the UK – it didn’t occur to me that anyone would find a Ptarmigan and Snow Bunting ousted by the Scottish snowfall, turning up in SHROPSHIRE credible??? My mistake was to mention the ‘Summer plumaged’ Snow Bunting first and ‘hook line and sinker’ the rest is history and took quite a few phone calls to clear up…
First Birdnet, then RBA and finally Birdguides perpetuated the scam – I got them to update sightings as ‘erroneous’. All this, while I was 100 miles away in Sheffield looking after Gemma performing in the UK national swimming champs – so no birding tomorrow….
Finally, FAO all the bird news services (apart from April 1st 2010) everything you see / read about here is genuine with no strings attached! (Honest…..)
