This bird isn’t even on my 415-strong USA list. Sibley suggests a rather spotty autumn occurrence on the eastern seaboard, so my brief year in Connecticut wasn’t sufficient to touch base with it. Of course the species is a mega over here with only three previous records, the last in 1988, and even my non-twitching friends have mentioned it.
First showing at Meare Heath, part of Shapwick Heath NNR, two weekends ago, the bird had disappeared overnight. My plan that day had included Saints against Spurs on the telly and it didn’t reshape to take in this extreme vagrant. Bad plan, then. The worse ‘cos we only drew.
However, the bird was back on Wednesday. From work or home, the Somerset Levels are a good hour away and something of a commitment. Plus, I’d planned to work on the Saturday. It wasn’t looking good.
Come Sunday the hudwit had clung on. I tempted Fate all the same by getting up late after a Brockley Forest gig the night before. That began to seem a double bad plan when my arrival at the car park coincided with a fierce downpour. A steady trickle of departing birders was also ominous but the weather might have been their reason.
The rain eased and I set out. Hmm, I’d got parked easily too. What was going on? The first passing scope though reassured me that the bird was still showing and a bunch of diehards was still on it. I upped the urgency and couldn’t even be bothered to check a potential great white egret.
The diehard bank of scopes trained on one point should have made picking the Hudsonian out from a hundred or so black-tailed godwits a cinch but the search was quite hard. I scanned the entire flock on the scrape about three times, determined to do it the honest way, before settling on a somewhat darker individual. Once isolated, it was obvious. Its other differences were more subtle: it looked larger but that was due to the colouring; its bill was upturned like a barwit, and slimmer and longer. This seemed to allow the bird to feed in deeper water than its flock. For I suppose it must have decided that the blackwits were journey’s end and it must shift in as familiar surroundings as it could.
The rain was still raining so I retreated to the actual Meare Heath hide and would return for a better look later. There, I discovered that the dunlin, noted casually as also being in attendance, were new for my Somerset Levels list.
The view from the hide was quiet but class birds kept coming. At least three marsh harriers passed and a definite great egret flew; bitterns boomed and cuckoos cucked; a lone hobby hobbed. They all went on the year list.
My return to the scrape had the hudwit more distant and again hard to locate. However, this time it flew and displayed its diagnostic underwing pattern. That was what everyone had been waiting for.
The interest wasn’t over: as I walked back to the car park, a garden warbler sang. Atypically it was perching on a open branch and easy to see. As nondescript as you could possibly fear, that is nonetheless the species’ best field mark. It also sings gloriously.
Then it was across the road to Ham Wall and the reason why I’d parked so easily: a massive great car park has opened over there – amazing what an absence of a year brings. The birding was quieter if seven hobbies hawking can be called quiet. In all I must have counted a couple of dozen of these smart falcons. A Cetti’s also showed, reed warblers were plentiful and I caught one tantalising electric ping of a bearded tit – also a first for the site. Did I say quiet? Not a bit of it.
The day wasn’t over. I’ve long meant to stop at Pensford for dippers, which are supposed to be guaranteed. I couldn’t drop in without sampling a pint of Crimson King at the Rising Sun and admiring the railway viaduct, which is a theme of late. And the dippers are reliable: a quick glance over the bridge there gave me two straightaway.
I love it when a plan finally comes together.