After feeding the sheep first thing I left the quad bike parked up in the field and decided to head over to check out our secluded east coast bays. The wind has been in the east for some time now and the garden was full of common migrants so all the main 'migrant hotspots' needed checking. I arrived at Ogof Capel, the site where St Justinians chapel was said to once stand, now a deep cut cove thick with vegetation. I had only been there a minute when a beady red eye with a huge white moustache dripping from it's beak was staring out of a cliff clinging blackthorn bush at me! Having seen 4 previous birds on Ramsey and countless more when I worked on Mallorca I knew straight away it was a male subalpine warbler. The problem now was which one?!
In recent years the species has been split into 3 - Western, Eastern and Moltoni. I was more than a bit rusty with regards to what features to look out for and with no bird book in the field (and forgetting I actually had the Collins app on my phone!) I managed to grab some less than perfect photos and send them to Rich and Giselle on Skokholm and Dave Astins of West Coast Birdwatching on the mainland. All were very familiar with the splits and replied immediately with some really useful key features to look out for.
Unfortunately I didn't manage to obtain all the features that would have clinched the ID but it's looking promising for being an Eastern subalpine warbler, the less common species in the UK when compared with Western (with Moltoni being the least recorded). Important features we did get were the size and shape of the moustache stripe (prominent on Eastern, like it is on our bird, and thin on Western (usually!)) and the fact the brick red on the throat doesn't extend down the chest and belly - on Western the whole front of the bird is usually red on a male bird in spring. It would have been nice if it had called and even nicer if it had spread it's tail and allowed me to see (or rather photograph well) the extent of white in the tail feathers. There was no sign of the bird this afternoon but it was very elusive this morning so hopefully it was just resting up and I'll look for it again first thing tomorrow. If it doesn't show again I'll submit my record and let the powers that be decide it's fate. Either way it was a cracking bird! (it is the 6th record of subalpine warbler for the Ramsey and the first since 2014 - all previous birds have been females or western males, so this will be a first record for Ramsey if accepted as an Eastern)
If all this talk of subalpine warbler splits has piqued your interest then this Surfbirds article might be of interest
Probable Eastern subalpine warbler on Ramsey today
It was a busy day for migrants on the island with the highest day count for both willow warblers (30) and blackcaps (24). A second ring ouzel of the year (another female) was almost forgotten about in all the excitement and we had first records of the year of hen harrier, dunlin and sedge warbler. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?........
Marvelous ! How exciting !