Buff-bellied Pipit and Siberian Chiffchaff, Burton Marsh 28th December 2013
Siberian Chiffchaff, Burton Marsh, Dec 2013
The reported presence of a Buff-bellied Pipit and a Siberian Chiffchaff at Burton Marsh was too much to resist and with just a few days of 2013 left I was determined to add another tick to my 2013 year list – indeed a it would be a life tick ! Being a Saturday we were pretty sure that we would be in the company of a few other birders but I wasn’t really expecting the eighty to one hundred birders that must have been there whilst we were.
We took the same route as we would have done if we were going to Inner Marsh Farm but we kept on the road as it bears right along the edge of the marsh (Station Road). We found a parking spot there and set up the scope.
The sheer numbers of eyes available was very helpful as there were lots of Meadow Pipits everywhere causing quite a distraction. The search for the Buff-bellied Pipit went ahead when suddenly not one, but two, Siberian Chiffchaffs appeared bobbing along at the bottom of the fence that borders the marsh giving us quite good views.
The Buff-bellied Pipit was a bit trickier due to the large number of Meadow Pipits everywhere but someone found it among them and we got reasonable good views of it before it disappeared into the wrack. This was my additional life tick as, although I hadn’t seen a Siberian Chiffchaff before, this is apparently a sub-species rather than a distinct species in its own right. For a further discussion whether there were one, two or any Siberian Chiffchaffs there, however, see the entry for the 1st January at this this blog.
I couldn’t get a snap of the Pipit because it was a little too far for the lens I had to hand but I did get some average snaps of the Chiffchaffs.
The marsh was full of birds. Apart from the Pipits and Chiffchaffs there were very many Stonechats and someone said that they had seen a Wheatear. The rather sparse trees along the road were visited regularly by the odd Redwing and Fieldfare and, although we went on to Burton Wetland Centre after, the best of the birding was just from the side of the road looking out over the marsh.