On this day (April 12th 2016)... Iberian Chiffchaff at Granville Country Park!

I've already looked back to the 2017 Iberian Chiffchaff, well here's the much showier bird on 12th April 2016 (Granville Country park, Telford)

Dropped in to Granville Country Parkon the way to give a talk at Lichfield and with only about 90 mins to spare. With excellent light, I had high hopes of improving on the first day? It took the whole 90 minutes to get some decent images and the best ones came from just three brief opportunities......

Here's the first, with an annoying branch that ruined most of the burst!

The second one was somewhat 'looking up'!

But at last caught a burst of song.....

And finally preening time!

Apart from an annoying leaf, go to be happy with this :-)

Always go back......

Granville Country Park - Iberian Chiffchaff!!!

Hastily processed pics and a 'song' video of the Iberian Chiffchaff at Granville Country Park this afternoon. Less than 100m from the where the 2016 Ibe Chiff was resident during April 2016!

I had joined Andy Latham and John Reeves at about 2.15. They hadn't seen it but it was pretty convincing on song, lurking somewhere in the bushes beyond the small pool. It certainly looked like mission impossible to get a glimpse other than the brief flight views we managed until this happened...

Totally against the run of play and then a short while later, it paused to preen on the opposite side of the pool! That long supercilium and other features reminiscent of the 2016 bird....

And here's the bird in 'song' when it wasn't doing a perfect impression of Common Chiffchaff.

It was impossible not to have doubts but presumably this is an Iberian Chiff mimicking a Common. It was 'Iberian' when not in view but then frequently singing its heart out above our head as a 'Common' when feeding. And NO, before you query it, there weren't two birds involved...