On 22/10/22 I was out birding again in the East Neuk of Fife, making the most of a week of leave. Due to the easterly airflow and cloud/ rain during the previous few days the birding had been excellent (and made a nice change the Fife Ness seawatching that had dominated much of my birding time during the previous couple of months). Good numbers of commoner migrants had been arriving and several scarce species had turned up. I’d found a Red-breasted Flycatcher at Fife Ness on 20/10 and Barred Warbler at Lower Kilminning on 21/10, Brian Allan had found a Red-flanked Bluetail Upper Kilminning on 21/10, and there were also a few Yellow-browed Warbler in the area.
With increased birder coverage resulting from the fall of birds (the area is surprisingly under-watched the majority of time) on the morning of the 22/10 I decided to bird away from the usual ‘hotspots’ and work the Crail/ Wormiston area. This decision was also in part due to the thick haar present that morning which was reducing visibility and light levels- my plan being to start in the open habitat and then bird the wooded areas once the mist had burned off and light levels had (hopefully) improved. This decision seemed to have paid off as at 08:50 I flushed a Richard’s Pipit from a stubble field close to the footpath to Wormiston.
At 10:50 I was walking the farm track that runs along the security fence on the western edge of the northern part of the long abandoned Crail airfield. This is an area of derelict WWII buildings that has reasonable patches of tall weedy vegetation interspersing the buildings and areas of tarmac. As I was walking I noticed through the mist a strikingly pale passerine on the fence line about 40m ahead of me. On ‘binning’ it I got a brief glimpse of a chat before it dropped down inside the perimeter fence. It didn’t look right for a Whinchat, despite its strikingly pale colouration as the head pattern appeared too weak, and so I quickly moved a few metres towards where the bird had disappeared. I relocated it perched low down on the top of dead thistle head but again only got a brief view before the bird moved again and was lost from sight. It was clearly a Stonechat but looked decidedly eastern due to its very pale underparts, strikingly paler throat, indistinct pale supercilium, and what looked like a peach coloured rump. It occurred to me that I should have paid more attention to the online Siberian vs Stejneger’s discussions over the previous couple of years.
I was aware that with such fleeting glimpses and the misty conditions there was a chance that the bird might disappear before I got any decent views and even then some features may not have been visible with just bin’s. The bird reappeared briefly so I maxed the zoom on my point and shoot bridge camera and rattled off some photographs (see three grainy images below) at which point I lost the bird again as it flew out of sight behind a mound of earth.
A quick glance at a couple of photo’s and the features that I thought I’d seen in the field were indeed present, though in the pictures the rump looked surprisingly richly coloured. The mantle appeared darker than I was expecting, but the quality of the images was poor, and not helped by the mist. I took a BOC shot of one of the images and WhatsApp’ed it to my brother Kester Wilson, asking for his thoughts. He immediately phoned back with the opinion that it looked good for Stejneger’s (Amur) Stonechat. I was somewhat nervous that the quality of my image and the poor light/ visibility might have exaggerated some of the bird’s features and so put out the message ‘Sibe Stonechat’ at Crail alongside a BOC shot onto the local bird news grapevine and Twitter. So within 10 minutes of finding the bird I had put the news out, and the first observers arrived very shortly afterwards.
The bird proved surprisingly elusive for the remainder of the 22/10 and was only seen on a small number of occasions. The light conditions remained poor due to mist, then rain, and then fading light when the bird was on view. Late in the afternoon I was back on site (having further refreshed my memory of the features that appeared to be consistent for separating Siberian from Stejenger’s Stonechat). The bird showed very late on in the afternoon in fading light and still appeared okay for Stejneger’s. I just hoped that the bird was still present the next day as the forecast was for much improved weather.
The early morning of the 23/10 was actually gloomy with frequent showers and there was no sign of the bird until 10:00 when the rain ceased, the cloud cleared and the sun came. At this point the stonechat reappeared in the same area as when I first found it and for the remainder of the day and indeed its stay it showed extremely well as it fed just the other side of the perimeter fence, frequently coming within 5-10m. The better light and more prolonged views (‘scoped at <10m) confirmed that all of the expected 1st calendar year female Stejneger’s Stonechat features were present.
Several photographers were also able to get some excellent photographs, in a range of light conditions (thanks to John Anderson for permission to use his photographs in this blog).
It was hoped that confirmation of the Stejneger’s Stonechat identification would be provided via genetic analysis of the dropping samples retrieved on 23/10 and 25/10. It initially proved not possible to extract DNA from the samples, and I resigned myself to it having to go down as ‘Eastern’ Stonechat until the field identification criteria for the species were (hopefully) confirmed. However, on Christmas Eve I received an email from Martin Collinson at Aberdeen Uni. A last ditch attempt, involving rinsing down all of the vegetation and inside of the sample bags had yielded 224 base pair fragments of DNA and it WAS indeed a Stejneger’s Stonechat! The results were 100% identical to birds from Sakhalin and Vietnam, but showed 8% divergence from maurus (Siberian). Many thanks to Martin and his Lab for their efforts. A take away message is definitely that if relying on droppings rather than a feather for genetic work, get as many samples as possible.
The bird seemingly departed overnight of 25/10 and there was no sign on the 26, 27 nor 28/10.
Stejneger’s Stonechat (John Anderson, 23.10.22) 
Stejneger’s Stonechat (John Anderson, 23.10.22) 
Stejneger’s Stonechat (John Anderson, 23.10.22) 
Stejneger’s Stonechat (John Anderson, 23.10.22) 
Stejneger’s Stonechat (John Anderson, 23.10.22) 
Stejneger’s Stonechat (John Anderson, 25.10.22) 
Stejneger’s Stonechat (John Anderson, 23.10.22) 
Chatterstanes 
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