With the incredible news that Paul French had found a 'Meena' Rufous-turtle Dove in his garden at Easington near Spurn,it was a no brainer to go and see this bird and add it to my Yorkshire bird list and also reacquaint myself with this distinctive species.
After an aborted attempt to see the bird in the morning and news it was showing again in the afternoon, i made my way over to attempt to see the bird this time.
After meeting up with TC,we had the briefest of views of the bird as it shot from Tony Broome's garden at the old school back to it's previous site at Paul and Georgia French's garden.
A bit of a wait ensued,before we were very kindly allowed into the French's upstairs living room to see the bird sat in a fruit tree at the back of the garden.
I managed to get some useful video of the bird preening it's tail,showing the diagnostic white tail tips to the tail,a feature shown by 'Meena' and not 'Orientalis',the other larger race of Rufous-turtle Dove which shows greyish tail tips.
Some really great views were enjoyed of the bird and again a big,big thank you must go to Paul and Georgia for allowing people into their home.
unbelievably,this is the 3rd Rufous-turtle Dove i have seen in a garden,with previous birds including the very popular juvenile 'Orientalis' bird seen at Chipping Norton in January 2011.The Easington bird mirrored this 'Orientalis' bird,by the fact the very kind Akers family allowed people into their kitchen to view the bird feeding on the bird table in their garden raising a sizeable amount for charity in the process.
Hopefully the same will be said about the Easington bird,with all money donated going to the Spurn Bird Obs.
The other bird i had seen was also a bird of the race 'Meena' at Otford in Kent in May 2016,after TC had kindly driven us to to see it.The bird was a proper pain to see,but we eventually managed to piece the ID features together another reason i wanted to see the Easington bird.
The following is a phonescoped video clip of the bird.
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