Female Dusky Thrush, Derbyshire – first 2017 tick

The first winter female Dusky Thrush at Beeley, Derbyshire, was my first British ‘tick’ of 2017 today – a long over-due twitch at that. It’s been one of those birds that, when it arrived, I couldn’t spare the time to go for it, but then as the weeks have gone by and it was still being reported, I worried that it would do a flit moments before I got there! Anyway I did decide to go and it, obligingly, decided to hang around. Giving reasonable but rather distant views. A lovely bird all the same, as was the superb ‘bonus bird’, in the shape of an immature White-billed Diver, on the River Witham, Lincolnshire, on the way home!

Immature White-billed Diver, Lincolnshire