Barry Hulme (one of the Pennington regulars) told me today that within the last couple of days the Firecrest has been seen near the Viewing Screen by two unknown birders who reported the sighting to the Office. Ian Woosey

Cheers Steve,

might well know who that may have been, but utilising important records like this from pagers and bird information services (even if they're not county rarities) is surely near enough hearsay? Not that this particular may come under that sweeping statement 

Either way, the current Firecrest would appear not to have been the first record then, even if none of the regulars knew about the previous one  

Ian,

There is one previous record from PF in the database. This was on 22nd December 2000. Observer - Walker (no first name). The comment is "1 per pager". This record was published in the 2000 GM report.

There was one at Chorlton Water Park from 5th Dec 2000 until 14th March 2001, though remained elusive for the first few weeks.

could do, there have been 2 overwintering birds in recent years, one at elton which i was lucky enough to find in october 2001, it stayed just into 2002 and another at orrel water park wintered a couple of years ago. this one might overwinter but i wouldnt chance it if i was you. cracking bird and well worth seeing.

Hi

Thats good news! Please do you know if firecrest tend to hang around one locality a long time. Perhaps its going to stay at Pennington for the winter.

Ian

This little beauty showed well again later in the afternoon to atleast 3 other observers on seperate occassions (that I know of) all of whom had little if any of a wait for it to appear- lucky devils!

After a long wait and search, Rob Adderley, Judith Smith and myself finally got a superb but brief view of this cracking little bird at 11:10am. The bird was in the scrub and bushes on the same side as New Hide but much further up, opposite where the path from Horrock's Hide meets the main path.

Thanks to everyone for getting the news around so fast and not least to Frank for finding, as far as I'm aware, a new bird for Pennington Flash!

 

Frank Obertelli has just phoned to tell me he had a Firecrest this morning at 09.20 from the New Hide at Pennington Flash. He had very good views of it.