A RARE bird has ruffled the feathers of twitchers in the UK after being spotted for the first time in over 40 years.
The scarlet tanager was on its way to South America before it was blown off course by a hurricane.
The tiny yellow bird has been brightening up gardens in Shelf, West Yorkshire, and has created quite a stir.
One bird-watcher made a 40-minute journey from his home in Leeds just to see the feathered-delight.
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Joe Eckersley told The Yorkshire Post: “I never thought I’d see a scarlet tanager in the UK, let alone in Yorkshire.”
Only slightly heavier than a strawberry, the 29-gram bird should be heading to Central or South America from the North East Coast of America or southern Canada.
Joe, who typically travels for up to two hours at a time to birdwatch, first started ‘twitching’ when he was 10 years old.
“It’s probably been here since October. I think the most likely thing that’s happened is it will have been blown off course by a hurricane,” he added.
He said that the last sighting of the scarlet tanager was on Barra in the Outer Hebrides in 2014, but this is the first time the bird has been seen in mainland UK since the 1980s.
It was briefly spotted in Cornwall.
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Geoffrey King, who has been a keen birdwatcher for 15 years drove 220 miles from Weybridge in Surrey to see the creature for himself.
He waited for five hours before the yellow bird appeared and described the moment as “exhilarating”.
Geoffrey, 67, told the BBC that he was about to call it a day just moments before he saw the bird.
“I had basically given up. Somebody called and there it was at the top of the tree! It was a great relief to see it.”
What is a scarlet tanager?
The stocky songbird has a thick blunt-tipped bill and their sound has been likened to a robin, but with a ‘cold’.
It’s a medium-sized bird that was up until recently part of the tanager family (Thraupidae).
It is now classified as belonging to the cardinal family.
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They weigh around 29 grams and the population is considered “least concern”.
Males are a striking red with black wings and tails, while the females are olive-yellow.
Another avian fanatic from London set a 5.00 am alarm to travel from London to Yorkshire.
“The older I get, the more it blows my mind that something the size of a sparrow can fly across the ocean, 3,000 miles (4,828km), to get here. It’s extraordinary,” he told the BBC.
Scarlet tanagers are medium-sized American songbirds and members of the cardinal family.
The American Bird Conservancy described the scarlet tanager’s song as “a robin with a cold”.
