Exmouth - Thu 1 Apr

A twitch this afternoon, my first for well over a year, and I drove straight down to Exmouth after work to try and see the long-staying (but until this week inaccessible due to lockdown restrictions) Northern Mockingbird. Arriving on the housing estate where the bird had been lingering since early in the year at around 5.10pm I saw a couple of birders staring at a garden. A quick chat and I found out they had seen the bird earlier but it was out of view and may have dropped down to feed, they suggested viewing from the end of the road may be profitable so leaving them to it I set off round the corner and soon found the small alley that had been rereferred to in various sightings and a chap with a camera and bins who beckoned me over. The Northern Mockingbird was just over a wall and viewable, albeit in vegetation. Too close for the scope I grabbed a couple of record shots through my bins.

After feeding on a bird feeder it flew up in to a small tree just above my head before then alighting to the top of a telegraph pole where it stayed for a couple of minutes, enabling me to get better photos.

The Northern Mockingbird then dropped down and was lost to view, so with the job down I walked back to the car and headed back home after a successful mission.