BLYTH'S REED WARBLER ADDED TO THE COUNTY LIST

One of the county's more remarkable, most well-watched and most difficult to identify species was added to the official county bird list after Phil Rhodes found and acrocephalus warbler at Hope Carr, near Leigh, on 20th January 2019. The bird was subsequently identified as a Blyth's Reed Warbler and the rest is as they say...history!

This would have been easily the most difficult species the county rarities committee might ever have had to assess were it not for the many excellent and tremendously instructive images that were obtained by many photographers and not least to the fact that the bird remained present on site for so long and often allowed fantastic close views. 

Hands up all those who predicted a Blyth's Reed Warbler on an old smelly sewage works in a little ex-mining town in inland north-west England in the middle of winter? So, that's no one then...