Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler, Sea Palling Sep 19, 2014, A. J. Kane and T. E. Allwood.

10 Years After – The Greatest Story Never Told.

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Probably my most exciting two hours of birding in the UK and an episode that saw us transformed from merely strongly disliked to utterly detested by a section of the twitching community. Oh well. The episode began on the late afternoon of Sep 19, 2014. The past few days had been decent for migrants with a reasonable number of commoner species and a few really good bits and bobs being discovered in other parts of the UK. Around 4pm I decided to cycle to a spot near my allotment that had been productive in recent days. The areas consisted of an overgrown ditch at the edge of a field bordering an area of mature conifers and bushes and a large private garden.

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I dropped my bike in a quiet spot and set off working the edge of the field about at a distance of about 30 feet. A couple of Willow Warblers were calling and flitting about, and at least one Pied Flycatcher.  Around 5:15 pm I heard a call that sounded interesting and approached the conifer line. As I arrived at the ditch just before the garden and conifers, a bird shot out from almost directly under my foot. It flew across the ditch and dived into thick cover. Immediate thoughts were “What the hell was that!?” It appeared similar to an oily and rufous-toned Dunnock. The back down to the tail was a warm brown tone and had dark oily streaks down the mantle. The wings were dark and were "rounder" than I was expecting. It gave the impression of a swarthy bird from above. I carried on searching for it and after a few minutes a bird shot out from the top of ditch side again and flew low across to the other side. This time I had a much more lateral view but it was just as confusing: the underparts of the bird appeared to be gingery yellow but with heavy black streaking again seen on the mantle. Wow, the penny then dropped that this was something I definitely hadn’t been expecting.

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Andy Kane arrived quickly and we very carefully continued to walk a small area on the ditch side and close to the ditch edge. The bird flushed several times in a quite remarkable manner – it managed to walk through the grass completely unseen by us and flush from where we had just walked from, again giving the impression of a very gingery, streaky, warmly coloured bird. We called a few birders we knew and put them on standby. For around an hour we kept trying to get a proper look at the bird. We discussed trapping it the next morning but there were several issues to consider and we put the idea on hold until later. Several times, the same thing would happen – no matter how carefully we walked, the bird would appear nearby out of the grass and make a short flight back into cover. I had my camera but the only way to get anything would be to have the video running and hopefully catch something useful as it flushed. That idea soon proved to be counterproductive so I reverted to old fashioned field craft and skills. At some time not long after 7pm, we were walking ultra-slowly along the ditch side about 20 feet apart and approaching each other when it shot across the ditch and landed out of my sight somewhere near the base of large conifer on the other side of the ditch.

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The next few minutes were as tense as any penalty shoot out I can recall. Andy suddenly said in a stage whisper “Don’t fucking move, I’ve got it. Just don’t move”. He’d got his bins up and was looking at the base of the conifer. I stood stock still as he started to grill the bird. I moved my hands to my bins very slowly and began raising them to my eyes. The longest 10 seconds I’ve ever had to endure. As I was doing this, I was also starting to lean to my right to view the area Andy was looking at. A few seconds later and I could see the bird with my naked eye. I got my bins to my eyes and had a few seconds on the bird. The first thing I noticed was the clearly pale throat. Also apparent were the brown, streaked upperparts, pale-ish legs, a Sedge Warbler-like head with black feathering and a long curved locustella wing. Sadly, I didn’t get any longer on it and it shot off yet again.

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By now it was getting towards the last 20 mins of light. We decided to go home and check in the books for anything important that we might have overlooked. Andy called me a bit later and simply confirmed what we knew: “It was definitely a PG Tips”.  Andy’s views of the bird were much better and longer than mine and he noted more of the head detail with the darker / black crown feathers giving it a capped effect and the pale supercilium added to it to produce an appearance reminiscent of a Sedge Warbler. Although it might sound odd, in these situations it always best to be belt and braces so we wanted to be absolutely sure that a Lancey or a plain old Gropper couldn’t be mistaken in any way for the bird we saw. The warm brown tone of the upperparts from mantle to uppertail, prominent dark 'messy' mantle streaking, gingery flanks and underparts, plain throat, lack of clear flank streaking, dark uppertail, dark rounded wings and the presence of a capped head and supercilium, all identified the bird as a Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler. The date was perfect for one and I’d seen them do very similar things in ditches, fields and wetter habitat edge overseas, so from its first flight across the ditch the adrenalin was well and truly coursing. The most remarkable aspect of the whole thing is that we eventually managed to get views of it on the deck.

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We then had the thorny problem of what to do next. We were already roundly disliked by many Norfolk birders for not releasing news of several other good birds in private locations that we had access to. The result of such adverse views of us had meant that pretty much any decent bird away from easily accessible areas was suppressed. We’d had a lot of trouble in the past few years with people behaving like utter idiots with no regard for private property, parking sensibly and being pleasant to locals. There was no way this bird would be viewable to more than a couple of people at a time and more than two people would very likely make it impossible to see. Added to this was the fact that where we were viewing from was a private field abutting a private garden and both landowners allowed us access to parts of their land. In particular, the owner of the large house and garden was definitely not in favour of people causing any kind of disturbance on or near his property so there was simply no option of any public access. We did, though, let several locals know but impressed upon them that seeing the bird was going to be extremely difficult, and there would only be the possibility of two people at a time being able to walk the ditch and ditchside area. However, perhaps for the best, the bird was gone by the morning and the problem solved itself.

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I conversed with a couple of well-respected Norfolk birders who had similarly found very good birds and asked for advice on what to do with the news. Their views were that it had happened and that people would find out one day so bite the bullet and tell it straight. Which I did. There was a predictable backlash from the usual contingent but even back then I had little to no time for those people. Living out your childhood dream of moving to Norfolk and finding great birds on your doorstep should be a joyful happy experience. The modern world being what it is, everyone thinks they have a right to whatever they want for themselves and they have little regard for anyone else in the process.

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We have never submitted the bird. Apart from a Fea's that is already written up and readable on this web site, it's the only bird in 17 years we haven't submitted. Without a photo or a video, it would be possible for the bird to be rejected (no tail tips seen?) and with members of news services and the listing fraternity on the Committee at the time and us already being unpopular, there’s no way we’d give them the opportunity. No-one missed the bird, no-one even had a chance to see it. It was there for two hours at the end of the day and never seen again. That’s life. That’s why I’m here and walking the fields and watching the seas and the skies. For moments like that. And I’ve loved every minute of it. Especially the last two hours writing this and reliving the experience!