After an expert find and then a welcome phone call from Wayne Gillatt, i travelled over the relatively short distance from home to Nebraska Wetlands on the outskirts of Kirton Lindsey to see this lovely bird.
After eventually finding the location after being re-directed twice around roadworks, i arrived to a group of happy faces indicating the bird was still here.
Now i had seen this species on 2 occasions before, once at Frampton Marsh RSPB in June 2019 and then another last July at Finningley on the Notts/South Yorkshire border. The first at Frampton just sat still and didn't fly around or give particularly good views and last years bird, only really showed distantly, so fingers crossed this bird would show better.
This was soon proven well, as the bird showed really nicely hawking insects and also perched on the ground, what a cracking little bird!.
It had a curious head bobbing routine when looking for insects i presume and on a couple of occasions jumped into the air to catch a passing fly.
This is the first juvenile i have seen and it was interesting how pale the bird was, particularly when sat head on facing us. They are such elegant birds in flight being very tern-like when hawking insects.
This species breeds through south eastern Europe, through Ukraine to south west Russian and northern Kasakhstan.
Also present on the wetlands were a smart juvenile Spotted Redshank, 3 Ruff and a Cattle Egret.
