Local Liverpool Little Swift Twitching

This afternoon we saw an alert message on BirdGuides: Little Swift, New Brighton! As we were already in the car driving to a shop we easily took off in the direction of New Brighton. It would be a 30 min drive from Woolton. We were kept up-to-date by the BirdGuides news app. A little after 15:00 we arrived at our destination. There were about 20 twitchers standing in front of us. The Little Swift was giving amazing shows - shearing by on eye level - from up close. What a superb bird!! I'd seen Little Swifts before in Spain, Morocco and Israel but the views we got in this bird might be my best!

It was foraging together with Common Swifts and House Martins along the promenade, making rounds around us all the time. The rain wasn't so bad at times, which was pleasant for us as we were looking at the bird. At the twitch we met Alex again and also some other ringers Stephen knew.

It was too bad that I only had my small 28-50 mm zoom lens on my camera. Photographing a bird with 50mm instead of 400mm is quite a difference. But as the bird got really close I got some satisfying pics with my camera! So it wasn't that bad after all!

Next to the Rose-coloured Starling from last week another great twitch here in the UK!

 Some photos from the Little Swift (Apus affinis)

Twitchers with the Little Swift soaring by on the right