Citrine Wagtail 30/08/15

Citrine Wagtail ( 1st Winter ), BHM,30/08/2015 ( Copyright T D Wright )

So there it is. It's not a great photograph but it was phonescoped in very poor light. The view I got through my telescope was much better. Even so, the continuous white line from its supercilium to its chin around the back of its ear-coverts is still discernible. The white then continues down its breast, belly, vent and ( you'll have to take my word for this! ) undertail-coverts. The broad white fringing to its wing-coverts and tertials was also quite striking. You can just about see its long, black hind claw too. Its pale lores are not too obvious but they were...I'm hoping that another birder with a camera who happened to follow me into the hide will make his pictures available to support what I'm saying. I zoomed it up and was just about to take a 2nd and better phone pic when it flew off, never to be seen again. I am genuinely disappointed that other locals especially didn't get to see it as they deserve to see all these goodies; plus, it helps to get a record accepted if more people see & photograph it. Apparently, the only accepted Citrine Wagtail for Devon was on Lundy in 1998. I'm told that another on the Exe was either not submitted or rejected. It's a rare enough sighting to be the first mainland Devon record ( if accepted ) and also the first mainland Britain record of 2015. According to the info. available on BirdGuides, there were no Spring records in the UK this year. The first report was on the Scillies on 19th August and since then a spate of sightings on Shetland, Orkney, Walney island and in the Republic of Ireland have left the Black Hole bird as the only mainland sighting so far this year. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not the last though...