Sunday 15 November 2015

Eurasian Crag Martin at the crooked spire.

Woken up by a text from Brian tells us to meet up at 6 am to head to Derbyshire in the hope of meeting up with the Crag Martin for another lifer for us all.
So it,s 2 1/2 hours to the crooked spire in Chesterfield & we arrive to find a big twitch of maybe 300 birders already spread around the car parks & on the roads all around the church of St Mary's & all saints with the famous crooked spire.
Three hours later & with a nice Greg's sausage roll & coffee to keep us sane we see a few people start to move away, up to this point we had not even thought about giving up, it was starting to look a bit glum weather wise when Brian said to me go & have a walk around the church as it is my thing to do that, I like that sort of thing, I did say as soon as I go the bird will show, so for the good of the all the birders gathered here I head into the church & spend a short time looking around a really nice church indeed. I had just got talking to a helper about why the spire was bent like that when a big cheer went up, just glad I was right by the door & I was out to find that the Martin had at last put in an appearance, it spent the next hour flying around the clock tower & then flying off for a short while & then back again to fly once again around the clock tower.
I did get the camera out but the bird was so quick & it was not going to land so I gave it a go & just managed to get a sort of photo just to record it for myself.
I have been on a lot of twitches now & I have never seen people so happy to have seen a bird, people were walking past us with great big smiles on there faces & it was a really happy place to be at that time, I don't know what made this so different but it just was.
As we drive home the rain came down to make it a hard drive home for Brian but well worth us going to claim another lifer for us all.
Lucky to get anything.
just a silhouette
The crooked spire 
Brian with a small group that were at the twitch