OBP at COSW
After a lacklustre week migrant-wise, a trip to Corton old sewage works (COSW) in NE Suffolk, proved that persistence is the most travelled path to success. A site I often bird before work on account of the ease and swiftness of the circuit starting at St. Bartholomew’s churchyard, a tranquil migrant trap in favourable conditions.
Walking the fenceline from the Anglian Water compound adjacent to the Broadland Sands caravan park to the cliff, a pipit flushed calling from a patch of weeds: a buzzing tseep. With a refreshed memory bank of Tree Pipit vocalisations from September’s Blakeney Point drift migrant fallout, a candidate Olive-backed Pipit Anthus hodgsoni immediately alarmed in my mind. A long-distant Siberian migrant, OBPs usually head to south-east Asia to spend the winter after breeding (or birth) in the vast coniferous taiga forest.
The pipit fortunately alighted about 50 yards away in the bramble tangle along the eastern perimeter of the old sewage works compound. Raising my camera, I couldn’t relocate the suspected Sibe in the viewfinder. With Meadow Pipits moving south overhead, had it sneaked off to join them? Slowly walking along the perimeter fence, a silent pipit suddenly flew up and perched on a post immediately in front of me. A serendipitous meeting of worlds, it inspected me with all the curiosity of first human contact since leaving its natal taiga.
Lens up, a few shots of the transfixed pipit were rattled off before it flew low west over the towering brambles. Reviewing my images, I was confident of the identification of OBP, newly-arrived after a North Sea crossing following its epic journey from east of the Urals. I cautiously announced the identification on the local birders’ WhatsApp channel to affirmative support. Alas, despite two local birders arriving posthaste, the pipit had disappeared.
OBPs are often as elusive as they are confiding. It may not have gone far, or it could have continued its reversed migration; perhaps en route to a lay over on the Isles of Scilly or beyond to Iberia.
The specific name hodgsoni commemorates 19th century English diplomat and collector Brian Houghton Hodgson who described numerous species of birds and mammals from the Himalayas.
