#Himalayan bluetail bird food plus#

It is related to birds like Robin and Wheatear, and they are in the Old World Flycatcher family. The entire population winters in Indo-China but odd individuals wander the wrong way and end up in Britain for a day or two, like this young bird. This is an outlying population that has continued to expand in northern Scandinavia which probably explains the bird's increasing frequency in Britain. The species breeds widely across the taiga zone of Siberia but in the 1940s it colonised Finland. Nowadays it occurs annually, usually with multiple records. But about twenty years ago its status changed and it started to make regular appearances in Britain, usually in autumn, but sometimes in spring. When I started birdwatching Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus) was an almost mythical rarity with just a handful of records that few birdwatchers had seen in Britain. This Red-flanked Bluetail was the star bird, though it was first found by someone else. Yesterday the weather was good for photography and I hadn't taken a photo for a few days so I decided to head for Spurn Point on the Yorkshire Coast where I had a wonderful time. I photographed this one at Spurn in East Yorkshire last week. This years run of easterly winds at migration time certainly plays a big part in the numbers turning up here. 2016 saw a record 26 Red-flanked Bluetails in Britain but 20 combined only saw ten. But weather plays a part too as numbers vary from year to year. There is currently a rather vague population estimate of between 300 and 1,500 pairs and apparently this species has had a good breeding season this year. It colonised Finland in the 1940s and the population there has increased and expanded in range. This was the twelfth ever to be recorded in Britain, yet just this year so far there have been eight seen in Britain. There were four during the 1970s, and three in the 1980s until I saw my first in 1993. To give an idea of their former rarity only four were seen from the first in 1903 in Lincolnshire through to 1960. But they are still one of my favourite birds and I still get a thrill each time I see one.

#Himalayan bluetail bird food plus#

But they have become much commoner since, and I have seen several without really trying, plus many abroad. In 1993 I drove from Yorkshire to Dorset just to see my first British Red-flanked Bluetail. Back in the 1980s Red-flanked Bluetail was top of nearly every birder's wish list. It seems a little perverse uploading a photograph of a Bluetail that doesn't show its blue tail but I do like that creamy throat marking when viewed front-on. Even its scientific name cyanurus translates as blue tail. You can see that its name is a prosaic description of the bird, which has orange patches on its sides, and a blue tail.

When I started birdwatching Red-flanked Bluetail was an almost mythical rarity with just a handful of records that few birdwatchers had seen in Britain. Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus) is a scarce visitor to Britain and amazingly this one was less than 100m from the Taiga Flycatcher at Flamborough Head that I uploaded yesterday.