Birders flock to Whitburn as ultra rare Indigo Bunting pays a visit

Bird lovers nationwide from across the UK have flocked to catch a glimpse of a very rare exotic visitor.

Lifelong ornithologist Peter Bell could hardly believe his eyes when he spotted the North American Indigo Bunting in the garden of his home in Lizard Lane in Whitburn at the weekend.

“Saturday lunchtime, around 12.25pm, I was sitting at the kitchen table,” he said.

“Looking up, I was astonished to see a bright blue bird, jockeying for position with the regular Tree Sparrows at the feeders in our back garden.”

Peter was pretty sure the bird was a species he had seen many years ago - and thousands of miles away: “It was something I had seen years ago in Florida, but I was still wondering ‘Have I got this right?’.”

Grabbing his camera, Peter was able to snatch a few hasty shots before reaching for his trusty American bird field guide to confirm his suspicions.

A member of the Durham Bird Club, Peter put news of the sighting out on the club’s WhatsApp Group and local birders soon started to arrive, quickly followed by others from further afield.

“Soon the kitchen was full , then the back bedroom, then the study,“ he said.

“Our back garden is completely land-locked, so the only way of viewing it was from the house.”

Fortunately, the star guest seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention and continued to appear throughout the afternoon, visiting nearby gardens which also had feeders and even perching on a TV aerial.

Guests continued pouring in over the weekend: “Around 100 people must have come through the house that first afternoon, and there were no doubt many more outside in the area who I never even saw,” said Peter.

“Sunday brought a far larger gathering, and our neighbours were very patient, if astonished.

The bunting continued to put in appearances during Monday but now seems to have moved on: “Today, after a clear night perfect for birds to migrate, it appears to have gone, but it will surely never find its way back to North America, where it really should be heading,” said Peter.

He believes his unique visitor is a wild bird that got lost on migration, possibly as a result of adverse weather, rather than an escapee from captivity: “It seems to be quite a young bird, which makes it more likely that it would make a mistake, and it had not been ringed.

“It was in pretty good condition, it did not look like it had been damaged from a cage.”

Peter thinks the bunting may have been in the UK for a while: “It probably came over in late autumn, because there were a lot of American birds that got caught up in the tail-end of a hurricane,” he said.

“A lot of us were saying at the time ‘There will be some fall-out from this’.”

It would be only the fourth sighting of a wild Indigo Bunting in the UK - and the first on mainland Britain: “This is why it caused national interest, and visitors from as far as Cornwall, Kent and Norfolk caught up with it during its three-day stay,” said Peter.

“We organised a collection, to be shared equally between Durham Bird Club and Durham Wildlife Trust. This raised £367 in that first afternoon.

“The following day, a nearby resident supplied bacon butties and tea, raising funds for the local Scouts.”

Peter is still taken aback by the weekend’s events: “I used to dream of moving to a Hebridean Island and finding an American bird in my own garden – but I never imagined I could do that right here in Whitburn,” he said.

“It’s the rarest bird I’ve ever found in over 50 years of UK birding.”