The Harrington Stone-curlew

First for five years … and almost to the day!

While out looking for Ring Ouzels, Gary Burrows found this rather nice Stone-curlew at Harrington Airfield this morning.  It was still around – though flighty – early in the afternoon. Thanks to Alan Coles for the images below.

Sharp-eyed observers will have spotted the rings: metal on left leg and colour ring on right. Did anybody get the exact colour in the field?

We don’t get them very often.  Although it breeds no further away than East Anglia, Stone-curlew is a vagrant to Northants. Including the last, in a field adjacent to Summer Leys LNR on 15th April 2009, there are eleven previous records dating back to 1880. Of these, four have been in April, two in July, and singles in May, August and October with two old records dated only to year of occurrence.