It is a massive Waxwing winter, with big flocks all over the place, including here in Norwich, 130+ off the Earlham Road, 60+ in the Avenues and 20+ on Dereham Road. Three days ago, news came through of a Cedar Waxwing in Nottingham- crikey! This could potentially be the first for Britain, so we had to get there. One of John and Fuzz's mates were giving them a lift from Norwich so I bagged the spare seat. We left Norwich at an unearthly hour, arriving into Nottingham four hours later, at breakfast time. It was a cold, grey day and like Norwich, there were reports of big flocks of Waxwings all over the place. One of these flocks would contain the Cedar Waxwing, it was just a matter of finding the right flock!
For the next several hours, we cruised the streets of Nottingham looking for Waxwings, finding flocks of 150, 80, 60, 30 etc, but none of them contained the rarer bird. As morning became lunchtime and lunchtime, afternoon, our hope of seeing the Cedar Waxwing started to fade. Groups of birders shared solemn glances. There had been no reports all day. We just had to keep searching. Mid-afternoon, the news we'd been hoping for arrived - the bird was still present, feeding in Rowans opposite a petrol station in northeast Nottingham. We headed over. On arrival there were about 20 birders all scoping a row of small Rowans opposite the garage. This looked positive! We parked up, piled out and ran across the busy road. Waxwing calls filled the air with high pitched trills - at least there were birds still here.
The Waxwings were sitting in some tall trees behind the petrol station- there was about 80. We started to scope the flock and just as I thought I'd got on the bird, they all started to fly. To our delight, they descended into the Rowans to feed, just across the road from us. And there it was - slightly smaller than its commoner cousins, with a striking white upper border to the dark face mask, unmarked wings and when seen from the front, strikingly white undertail coverts, very different from the bright rusty chestnut of the Bohemians. The bird's wings were dark, with pale edges to the tertials and there was no red waxy tips on the secondaries indicating a first-winter bird. We were all thrilled to find this bird, almost at the last minute; in fact all birders around us were absolutely delighted and mightily relieved!
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