A RARE bird has ruffled the feathers of twitchers in the UK after being spotted for the first time in over 40 years. The scarlet tanager was on its way to South America before it was blown off course by a hurricane. The tiny yellow bird has been brightening up gardens in Shelf, West Yorkshire, and has created quite a stir.
One bird-watcher made a 40-minute journey from his home in Leeds just to see the feathered-delight. Joe Eckersley told The Yorkshire Post: "I never thought I’d see a scarlet tanager in the UK, let alone in Yorkshire." Only slightly heavier than a strawberry, the 29-gram bird should be heading to Central or South America from the North East Coast of America or southern Canada.
Joe, who typically travels for up to two hours at a time to birdwatch, first started 'twitching' when he was 10 years old. “It’s probably been here since October. I think the most likely thing that’s happened is it will have been blown off course by a hurricane," he added.
He said that the last sighting of the scarlet tanager was on Barra in the Outer Hebrides in 2014, but this is the first time the bird has been seen in mainland UK since the 1980s. It was briefly spotted in Cornwall. The 28-year-old said people had flocked to the rural beauty spot to see the bird.
“When I was there, there were about 60 or 70 people waiting around. We waited around an hour before it showed, and it was probably there for six or seven minutes," Joe said. Geoffrey King, who has been a keen birdw.
