Cream-coloured Courser - my wait is over

I wasn't going to write about the little bit of twitching I did this week, purely because it was never my intention to fill these column inches with rare birds; this is because when I decided to start writing a blog the concept was more about the environment and conservation, but occasionally there are exceptions to the rules - and this exception was in the form of a Cream-coloured Courser!

This bird and me have previous history...

Just to give you a little bit of background to this tale, where I grew up in Essex - only a stones throw away from the glorious mudflats and creeks of the river Thames in Pitsea, I started my new found interest in birds, joining the YOC (Young Ornithologists Club) and learning the basics of ornithology as a young impressionable teenager. Around this time in 1984 a Cream-coloured Courser was found on Hadleigh Downs (now part of 2012 Olympic mountain bike course) only a 20 minute drive from where I lived. At the time I was far too young and inexperienced to ever appreciate and understand the magnitude of this sighting, let alone have the ability to recognise one of these birds - I was far too busy trying to separate Reed from Sedge Warbler. However, the slightly older birdwatchers I would come to meet and know in the coming years around this part of Essex would always talk about this amazing bird from the deserts of Africa, and from then, the Cream-coloured Courser assumed a somewhat mythical status within me and I kind of grew up hoping but never really believing I would ever see one of these birds grace our shores. That is until Tuesday evening in sunny Herefordshire, on the hills and valleys of England highest golf course at Bradnor, after a drive of almost 4 hours, traveling 180 miles (thanks Jono) and a wait of almost 28 years, there stood before me, giving exceptional views in the most idyllic of settings was a spring adult Cream-coloured Courser....truly astounding!

As I stood watching and enjoying the bird for all its magnificence - almost Egyptian pharaoh like, with the small crowd that had gathered alongside my fellow birding companions for the trip, Jono, Sean and Tim, I felt a sense of closure, having achieved a small goal I had sub-consciously set myself almost three decades ago... it's amazing how birds, animals and wildlife in general can effect and shape our lives in very different ways.

The mythical Cream-coloured Courser

Many thanks to Jonathan Lethbridge (Wanstead Birder) for kind permission to use one of his fine photographs.