Pale-legged Leaf Warbler - Bempton Cliffs October 2024

A bird that had been present for a couple of days in terrible weather conditions at Bempton in East Yorkshire was eventually identified as a Pale-legged Leaf Warbler. After giving brief views, and initially thought to be either Eastern-crowned or Arctic Warbler, a sound recording of the bird clinched the ID - the sound recording with frequency above 5.5khz ruled out its relative Sakhalin Leaf Warbler. On the evening of 2nd October identification was confirmed, and the Bempton RSPB site braced itself for an onslaught of very early morning visitors the next morning.

Pale-legged Leaf Warbler is found in eastern China and North Korea and winters in the Malay peninsula, so is several thousand miles off track. This is only the third British record, with last one found dead on the Isles of Scilly in 2016, and the first present for only one day only at Portland, Dorset in 2012.

So it was a dawn visit to Bempton on Saturday 3rd October. As expected, arriving in the dark before 6am meant the car park was already almost full, and there were several lines of birders in place surrounding the bushes where the bird had been seen to go to roost the previous evening. Some even claimed to have it in the thermal images but it seemed to move around before dawn so was lost by the time some light started to emerge. However, after a short time it called and flew high into the trees briefly before descending back into the dense bushes. A big relief that it was still present, I didn't see it at that point, and it took a good hour before I managed to get anything like decent view of it. It was incredibly elusive, staying low to the ground and only occasionally moving higher up into view. It seemed to move between three preferred areas, hotly pursued by several hundred birders struggling to get a glimpse.

Over three hours I managed to get a few good views of the bird, but it was so mobile and elusive they were never for more than 30 seconds at a time.  Sometimes it was possible to follow it through the bushes for a while and its key features were easier to pick out.  I was only able to get the camera on it long enough to fire off a few shots a couple of times.

This really was a spectacular little bird and a pleasure to see so close to home.  It stayed several days longer but was gone by 3rd October.

Thanks for looking.