Eastern Black Redstart – A Christmas Twitch
The best kind of twitches is when you get to see a really good bird close to where you are going anyway.
On 24th December 2016, I saw an Eastern Black Redstart on Christmas Eve close to my grandmother’s house in North Yorkshire at Skinningrove on the coast. The bird had been there since October and had been twitched by lots of people. We had held off from twitching it on the basis that we would be visiting my Gran for Christmas and hoping it would stay all winter.
It’s a subspecies at the moment but is a stunning bird which stayed near the water-line whilst we watched. It’s very distinctively different from other Black Redstart’s and so is ripe for splitting.
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| Eastern Black Redstart Skinningrove, Teeside Photograph taken by and copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
About The Author
Hi, I’m Dr. Mya-Rose Craig. I am a 19-year-old prominent British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist, diversity activist as well as an author, speaker and broadcaster. At age 11 I started the popular blog Birdgirl, and at age 17 I became the youngest person to see half of the birds in the world.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.