27 January 2014

Notts Rose-coloured Starling fiasco

This morning, I got a FB notification informing me that Andy Hall, the Notts county recorder, had posted something on the Notts Birders Facebook group. It concerned a possible Rose-coloured Starling at Bilsthorpe. I immediately text Paul Naylor ti inform him of the news. He then contacted AH for more info and promptly made his way to the site. 90 minutes later, I received a phone call from PN excitedly telling me they'd 'had it' albeit very briefly & views weren't conclusive. My heart sank. I was stuck at work and had no chance of getting til the weekend... unless......

My boss allowed me to take an extended dinner break in return for working late. I spanked it over to Bilsthorpe and spent an agonising 40 minutes scanning a very distant swarm of c1500 Starlings via my average glove box bin's. Nothing!

I returned to work feeling pretty gutted but my mood was lifted somewhat when I received a text from PN informing me that he'd spied a very convincing RCS lookalike albeit it was a standard council estate Starling with albino style RCS patterning. The story then became muddled when a chap who had apparently seen the RCS mid morning informed PN that the dodgy bird knocking about no way resembled the creature he & his mates had seen. Hmmmmmm, two bird theory????
Then, PN alerted me that he'd then found another partial albino Starling with dodgy patterning but this didn't resemble a RCS. Now, I ponder whether that other chap, had also seen the second dodgy bird and when quizzed by PN if his initial sighting was actually an aberrant Starling that is knocking about, the chap thought PN was referring to the '2nd' dodgy bird and NOT the RCS lookalike that was knocking about (I know, complicated isn't it).

It just seems too much of a coincidence to me that there is a partial albino RCS lookalike Starling knocking about in the area AND a genuine RCS, bearing in mind Notts has had two genuine records of RCS in the last three years after a gap of c50 years. Has Notts suddenly become the RCS capital of the midlands??
I don't think so.

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