Eastern Yellow Wagtail at Dingle Marshes
Eastern Yellow Wagtail Motacilla tschutschensis at Dingle Marshes and Corporation Marshes, Dunwich, November 7th to 19th: New for Suffolk Paul Green and Tom Williams October 25th, 2019 had been a fairly ordinary working day that involved checking the Konik ponies and the water levels in the reedbed at Dingle Marshes, Dunwich. With lunchtime approaching, Paul Green decided to walk to the beach and on reaching the shingle ridge almost immediately heard what sounded like the call of a Western Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava. Scanning the beach, he soon located what he took to be a Yellow Wagtail feeding around the edge of the saltmarsh. No sooner had he done this than it called and took flight, flying south and calling frequently before landing out of view in the middle of the grazing marsh. He thought that the call sounded quite ‘sharp’ and slightly different from the typical flight call of Yellow Wagtail with which he is familiar. With the bird having disappeared he phoned David Fairhurst for a chat, mentioned the wagtail to him and put the news out as a Western Yellow Wagtail. This sighting generated little interest within the Suffolk birding community and realistically I didn’t expect that it would be seen again. Fast forward to November 7th. Paul Green’s final job of the day was to check on a contractor who was re-profiling the pools and ditches on the reedbed edge at Dingle Marshes. Tom Williams, the newly-appointed RSPB intern accompanied Paul and, fortuitously, happened to have brought along his camera. As we approached the digger, Tom shouted, “Yellow Wagtail”. We both heard it calling as it flew towards the disturbed earth around the working excavator. Tom managed to get several images of the bird and filmed a short video sequence using his phone before we left. That evening, the photographs and the video sequence were widely circulated. Opinions were divided but by late evening the consensus was that it was ‘just’ a Western Yellow Wagtail, albeit on a very late date for this species.
Eastern Yellow Wagtail, Corporation Marshes, Dunwich, November 8th 55
Peter Kennerley
