To be honest,after seeing the superb White-rumped Swift back in October this was an ideal opportunity to see Little and compare ID features of the two species and obviously add it to my life list.
So at 2.30am i woke and couldn't sleep with the anticipation of twitching this North African species and i headed off.
Approximately 2 hours later and i was at Hartlepool and parked about 50 yards from where the bird was roosting.
So i got out the car and went and had a quick look,bumping into Elliot Montieth and a few other birders already looking at this mega huddled under the soffet of the big bay window.After a few minutes looking,i went back to the car for some kip until it got light.
At last it started to get light,so i got all the warm gear on and joined the group gathered to watch this cracking little bird,ready for it to leave it's roost.At about 07.15 a quick stretch of those long wings and it was off.
The bird was quickly re-located feeding along the northern edge of the headland and we got in position to try and get some pics.To be fair it was just too quick for my ageing camera,but i managed to get some record shots.
The bird showed fantastically close at times,sometimes passing the crowd at just a few feet away,what a great experience!.
I watched the bird up until about 8.30,but then it was time to travel home for work sadly,but what a great few hours watching my 4th species of Swift for the year and second rare species after the Pallid on my local patch yesterday,what an amazing couple of days.
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| One Of The Locals Watching The Crowd. |
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