Even nine years on I still have trouble believing what a superb day this was. The idea that it was possible to find such amazing birds as bluetails and OBPs was what drew me to east Norfolk. I never really thought that it would happen, much less so that both would happen on the same day and only a short distance from each other. Both took a hell of a lot of hard work to get to grips with, particularly the pipit. It would have been easy for us to give up on both, but you make your own luck and we stuck with it and got the pay off. Remarkably, I managed to find my own bluetail last year in Sea Palling - a more straightforward affair but no less thrilling. Anyway, it's that time of year when these bits of magic happen, so enjoy the read, get out there and give yourself a chance to experience it!

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​​​​Red-flanked Bluetail, King’s Loke, Hemsby, Oct 18, 2015 T. E. Allwood and R. Irvine

Late on Saturday Oct 17th, whilst I was walking the coastal scrub south of Sea Palling and Waxham, I saw a female Bullfinch fly in off the sea and then heard it give an interesting call as it landed in the first bit of available vegetation. I immediately reached for my phone to call Andy Kane but it wasn’t there. I had forgotten my phone. By that point it was drizzling and the useful light was almost gone, so I headed home. When I got there, my wife informed me that Andy and Ryan had been trying to get in touch with me. Obviously something of interest. I called Andy and he informed me that Ryan had just had brief views of what he thought he may have been a Red-flanked Bluetail. I quickly got in touch with Ryan and arranged to go down to the King’s Loke first thing in the morning to try and pin it down and secure an identification.

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I set off at around 06:30 and drove the short distance through Horsey and Winterton to Hemsby, seeing a Short-eared Owl in the broaching dawn on the way. We headed into the Loke – an area very similar to the productive Lokeside at Eccles and began scouring the area where the bird was seen. There wasn’t much activity initially aside from a few Siskin over, and plenty of thrushes etc. We had a couple of brief breaks in between a proper grilling of the area. Ryan was getting itchy feet, but I suggested we stick it out for a while longer. Not long after this, there was a bit of movement in the depths of the vegetation which we both clocked instantly. The bird then flitted and Ryan got onto it in a flash. Very shortly after I was also on the bird and overjoyed to be looking at an immature or female Red-flanked Bluetail. It then showed well for a short period at close range, only moving very short distances before flitting off into the deeper vegetation. It was not seen again until that lunch time when Barry Jarvis arrived and amazingly walked into the loke and straight into the bluetail, while Ryan and I were sorting out the identity of what turned out to be the Olive-backed Pipit.

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Detailed description

The bird was clearly a chat-type bird being basically robin-shaped and proportioned. The head was a dull browny-grey tone with a clear white eye-ring visible. The throat was an off-white / buffy colour and clearly demarcated from the rest of the head and the bill was short and dark, like a chat’s. The mantle and back were the same colour as the brown of the head. The upper breast area was slightly suffused greyish from below the pale throat to a short way down the breast. Most importantly, the flanks were very clearly orange – from the bend in the wing to around halfway down the wing. The colour was more intense in the centre, becoming weaker and more diffuse as it graduated into the breast/belly. The uppertail was marked with blue but this was only visible at certain times or the uppertail area could be seen clearly, notably when the bird was back on. So, it was obviously a Red-flanked Bluetail and the limited amount of blue in the tail and the buffy throat point to it probably being a first-winter female. Unfortunately, it was impossible to photograph due to the sheer amount of braches in the way preventing the camera from focusing. 

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What a fantastic day. Something I’d always dreamed of. Here we were, two east Norfolk patchers looking at our own Red-flanked Bluetail. After enjoying the bird, and a period of reflection, celebration and discussion of just how fantastic it was. And just a few hours later and we had finally got views and photographs of what was an Olive-backed Pipit. A quite momentous day. We then released news to Twitter and went home to celebrate a day that will probably not be repeated – but you never know…

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​Olive-backed Pipit, Hemsby Oct 18th, T.E. Allwood and R. Irvine. Also seen by A.J. Kane, B. Jarvis and M. Crossfield.

 

The morning of Oct 18th was already a memorable day in my birding life having enjoyed views of a first-winter female Red-flanked Bluetail with Ryan in the King’s Loke at Hemsby. Little did I know just how much better it was going to become… 

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Despite showing well for half a minute at close range, the bluetail was extremely elusive and the habitat at King’s Loke made the task of finding it again an arduous one. At around 10:30, we decided to have a change of scene and walked out of the loke into the adjoining rough grass field. The vegetation very was deep in some places, with large areas of grass up to two feet high, wet and bent over in places. As we walked across the field, Ryan put up a pipit and it called with a harsh speez-type call. Obviously anything calling like a Tree Pipit in mid to late October is worth pursuing and having had a couple of near misses with Olive-backed in recent years, it gets your pulse racing a little. However, birds being birds, this individual promptly flew up over the surrounding hedge and off. As it may have flown to the nearby campsite field, we decided to give that a try. A slow walk around the field, checking the hedges drew a blank for the pipit, but crests and thrushes were abundant and Siskins were moving overhead in small numbers.

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Having had no luck we returned to the field the bird flushed from and decided to try there again in case it had returned. We spread out and walked the field and it wasn’t long before the bird flushed again, giving the same call. This time it only flew about 50 feet before pitching down in the impenetrable grass. We steadily approached the spot and at about 20 feet distant from us the bird pitched up and called again, flying off to one of the surrounding trees where it became impossible to relocate. We returned for another go with the bluetail but that also was not obliging. A return to the neighbouring grass field resulted in the now expected flush and poor views of the pipit as it flew a short distance and buried itself out of sight.

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What had we got? Well, the call was okay for Tree Pipit and I’ve never been able to separate Tree and Olive-backed on call despite having heard large numbers of them in Asia – they just sound so similar to my ears that the call is of no use. Plumage-wise it was difficult to be sure of much; sometimes it looked rather dark, at others browner but never did we get anything remotely useful such as mantle streaking on it. It then went down 30 feet away and with a lot of caution we edged closer and closer to the spot. Suddenly I noticed the bird on the deck amongst some shorter grasses. I motioned to Ryan to stop and I raised my bins. “Looks like a redwing!” I exclaimed as the bird again called and took off to another part of the field. However, the view was so brief that I was not really sure of what I’d seen and thought the supercilium may have had a buff tint to it. Further poor views of the bird in flight revealed little and the lack of anything obviously pointing to OBP was now edging us towards another Tree Pipit.

 

Still, you have to be sure and we pressed on with the bird. At one point Ryan and I were 20 feet apart when the bird flushed and flew past us above head height at quite close range. This allowed a view of the underparts… “Jesus, it’s spotted like a Dalmatian” I recall saying. “Like a Song Thrush”. The spotting was black and bold and the underparts looked rather white. Ryan concurred and this gave us the resolve to pursue the bird to the end.

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By now Barry Jarvis had arrived and I don’t think he fancied two second views of a pipit so he went to try for the bluetail, which incredibly annoyingly he managed to see well within minutes of entering the loke. He came out into the field, and shortly after we put the OBP up again. This time it flushed to a tree in the surrounding hedge 50-60 ft away. And sat there.

Gingerly, and trying to remain calm, I extracted the SX50 from my bag, switched it on and tried to place the bird in the viewfinder. Panic! Where is it?! I sorted myself out, got onto the bird and started taking shots. Luckily, the bird stayed for a short while allowing me to get some half decent images before it dropped into deep cover. “Looks like a pretty normal Tree Pipit to me” said Barry… I took the camera over to Ryan and we looked at the images on the back screen. I can’t remember what Ryan said but it was probably pretty colourful. It was one of those birds that certainly looked “interesting”… There seemed to be that Redwing-like appearance to the head, there was a clear long supercilium with a drop down at the rear and a dark spot on the back of the ear coverts. On the super in front of the eye was that rich buffy-orange colour that I have seen on OBPs before… the spotting was heavy and black and looked markedly more contrasting than a Meadow Pipit.

 

Now it was getting exciting. We decided to go back to Ryan’s and check some images of well-marked Tree Pipits and canvass some opinion. I called AJK at around 3:00 pm and told him to get down pretty quickly as it wasn’t definitely sorted but we were in with a real chance of an OBP – a species we have both been dying to get in east Norfolk. Looking at images online, the bird appeared too well marked to be a Tree Pipit but without a clear view of the mantle, it was still a big call to make. We had to be 100% and so we went back out to nail it for certain. We walked across the field towards the rear hedge and about 30 feet from the border I put it up and it flew up into the lower branches of a tree just below head height. It was looking right at me and I got a good eyeful of the bold, black spotting and sharp head pattern. Then at around 3:30, in a moment of great fortune that is still burnt onto my retina, it did a 180 degree turn and promptly showed me its back. Full on. No markings at all. Plain olive. Elation. I shouted to Ryan “It’s got a plain back, OBP. It’s a fucking OBP!”. He punched the air, we both grinned like kids and celebrated. Hard work pays off. What a result. 

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Andy Kane and Mark Crossfield arrived and I gave Andy the now definite news. I then showed him the earlier pics saying “when you see the pics, you’ll probably say it’s clearly an OBP”. Which he did. Rather colourfully. All five of us went back to the field and attempted to get some better photographs or some prolonged views. The bird flushed a few more times, giving brief views before on one occasion it sat crossways on the fence and showed off its plain olive-green mantle before diving into cover again.

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I was ecstatic at that point. A bluetail and an OBP? The stuff of birding dreams. People go to Shetland and find less in a month. And on our doorstep? Insane. We were lucky, but the luckiest birder in Norfolk that day was surely Barry… he turned up and walked straight into a bluetail, came out of the loke and walked straight into an OBP. News of both birds was released to the news services at around 4:30. 

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​Detailed description:

Head pattern

Strong and very redwing-like on first impression. A dull olive crown, clear whitish supercilium, strongly orangey-buff in front of the eye, and long and well defined after it. The super then dropped at the rear of the ear coverts, being split by a dark line before ending with the presence of the typical dark spot at the base of the rear ear coverts. A dark line was readily apparent over the supercilium and photographs show that the crown was streaked darker. The bill was dark, pretty short and a bit chunkier/stubbier compared to a Meadow. The head pattern described can be approached by a Tree Pipit but the black spot is never so dark, the orange-buff patch never so bright and the overall pattern not so contrasting. There was no doubt – this was an OBP!

 

Underparts

The breast spotting was black and intense, standing out much more on the whitish underparts than the lighter spotting of a Tree or Meadow Pipit. The strength and extent of the breast and flank streaking clearly ruled out a Tree Pipit. The upper breast had some small areas of rich buff present that I only really noticed when the bird was standing head-on in the lower branches of the tree.

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Upperparts

These were of a distinct olive tone, looking more green-tinged when the bird was in cover. The mantle was essentially plain, without any clear marking at all. I couldn’t even see any faint markings there. This was the final clinching feature of a yunnanensis OBP. The wing bars, particularly the lower one, were distinctly buffy, a feature that seems fairly normal on autumn Olive-backed Pipits. The bird’s feet were never seen well although the legs were a bright pink.

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Call

The most frequently given call – every time it was flushed in fact - was a hoarse, sharp speeez type of call. It was perhaps slightly shorter than that of a Tree Pipit and perhaps slightly less hoarse but there was essentially very little difference to my ear. However, on occasion the bird gave a shorter, thinner and more redwing-like call that I do not associate with Tree Pipits.

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This is the first record of Olive-backed Pipit between Great Yarmouth and Overstrand. It was a real bugger to dig out and took several hours of effort. However, it’s all the more rewarding for that. It’s a shame it wasn’t in TG42 but I wouldn’t swap the day for anything. ​​​​