An Early Spring Flurry

I had a feeling today's pre-dawn rain shower would do something, and it clearly did as I enjoyed a positively exhilarating few minutes of birding at Bridge Marsh at about 8am. I know that doesn't sound like much, but for March and on the Axe I'll take it!

I'd spent the previous hour on Seaton Marshes, where my first Willow Warbler of the spring sung from a gorse bush alongside a ditch.  I heard it a few times then watched it pick some insects off of the yellow flowers, before it flew north across the marsh landing in a willow tree right next to me. It spent about ten minutes singing and feeding in this tree, then flitted off to the north. 

It felt like a real honour watching this tiny migrant, looking as fresh as a daisy (which is quite astonishing considering it has flown around three thousand miles already on its spring migration!) on active migration.  It shared its first minutes/hour of its time in the UK this year with me, and then just carried on with the job at hand.  Mind-blowing really.

The first ones always look really striking, having seen just Chiffchaffs for the last six months!

As mentioned above I then headed to Bridge Marsh, and upon arrival could see two lovely White Wagtails feeding on the main scrape.  White Wags are bizarrely scarce on the Axe, I can easily go a spring without seeing one so I really enjoyed these two despite the distance...

Lovely birds, and both of these were males

 

It then all went a bit mad.  As I was photographing these I heard a single call from a Yellow Wagtail somewhere to my south, and about ten seconds later this landed with the White Wags...

An on the deck spring Yellow Wag of any sort is a rarity on the Axe!

  ....a cracking male Yellow Wagtail, and a Blue-headed-type at that!  I will go into more detail on the head later in the post, but any Yellow Wag on the deck on the Axe in spring is seriously good value these days. I manage fly-over spring Yellow Wags just about annually, they just never land! And their reluntancy to land is even more puzzling when you consider how numerous they are in the autumn.

I had to check back through my records a surprisingly long way, as my last grounded Axe spring Yellow Wagtails were in April 2017, with two on Colyford Marsh one evening.  It really has been that long!  Today's bird was my earliest ever spring Yellow Wagtail and my first ever March one, not just here but anywhere the UK. 

Shortly after the Yellow Wag appeared, another White Wag joined the group and then a Little Ringed Plover flew in and shared the same scrape. All this with a few Sand Martins and only my second Swallow of the year flying around above. Spring magic.

The LRP was as distant as the wagtails

 

The wagtails took flight and after five minutes of no sign, suddenly the Yellow Wagtail and a White Wagtail were on a closer scrape.  This is when I had much better views of the Yellow Wags head. It was blue, but not blue enough...

The blue might have been a bit lacking but the yellow certainly wasn't!

Nice broad white supercilia visible here, and that blue crown. Throat yellow.

Blue-capped Wagtail probably more fitting

With a White Wag. Nape mostly olive, looking flavissima-like

In summary I think it would be best to label this bird as a flava/flavissima intergrade.  Yes it is a bit frustrating this wasn't a clear cut Blue-headed, but nothing can take away from the fact it was an Axe spring Yellow Wagtail! In March!  

Thank you for reading.