A Local Rosy amongst the Thorns

It’s not often that a national scarcity makes its way over here, and with the news of a local bird, I couldn’t resist nipping over to 'town' to see it. I found the alley in question and spent the next two hours watching and waiting for the thing to drop in. Eventually, at 6.20pm, it did: a stunning breeding-plumaged adult Rosy Starling! - almost out of nowhere and on its own, with hardly any other birds around. What a cracker! I quickly reeled off some record shots and then tried to approach as best I could without flushing it. To be honest, the bird wasn’t easily spooked, but annoyingly, it was never quite in the ideal position for the perfect shot. Still, I was reasonably pleased with some of the images and felt very lucky to have seen it. (Other birders either left too soon or arrived too late, and plenty of others the day before had missed it for one reason or another.) Moments later, barely 5 minutes after I’d first spotted it, the bird took off (avoiding the feeders in the garden of number 42 where it had previously spent its time apparently) and headed south, never to be seen again. (I hung around until 7.45pm and tried the next day for a couple of hours – without any joy.) It was a stunningly beautiful creature, easily the best of its kind I’d ever seen (better even that the one I’d seen in Gairloch many years ago), complete with pink and black bill.