Birds and Mothsof Burnham-on-Sea |
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Photographs of a Pied Wheatear!!, seen at Burnham-on-Sea, 30th November 2003. These are video grabs of analogue video footage kindly converted to digital by James Packer. The bird seen in the following pictures is clearly either a Pied Wheatear, quite how we made this error I don't know, and if it hadn't been for a local identification expert seeing the photograph that was posted on this website we would never have questioned it. At the time of observation we were not sure, and played with the idea of Pied or Desert. Desert wheatear was easily ruled out because of the white in the tail, but superficially the plain headed and brown colouration resembled this species. The mantle was plain, lacking any pale fringes to the scapulars or mantle feathers. I always thought a Pied Wheatear would be obviously dark brown, not buffy brown like this bird. The bottom two pictures are more like the colour I remember at the time, the top few seem to have lost their colour and turned the bird grey. I believe that it is a female Pied Wheatear. Any suggestion as to it's identity would gratefully received and apologies to anyone who, had we realised what it was, could have tried to see the bird. I spent about an hour in the rain getting soaked trying to relocate it at lunchtime to no avail.
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