Homage to a Cumbrian first

Allonby in West Cumbria is probably not famous for many things.  It is famous though for having hosted the first recorded British ( and indeed Western European ) Isabelline Wheatear.

The bird was first observed at Aigle Gill Farm on 11th November 1887 by the tenants Thomas and Richard Mann.  It was in a field that they were sowing with corn.  Most bizarrely Rev. H.A.MacPherson and Mr.Senhouse had only six days earlier visited the farmers and asked them to look for 'doubtful wheatears'.  So when they saw this pale coloured bird they did what Victorian naturalists always did - they shot it.  The corpse was sent to Rev. MacPherson and a chain of events was set off involving the luminaries of the day - he showed the specimen to Howard Saunders who was as it happened was just writing about the chats for his 'British Birds' and was able to correctly identify the bird.  It was also examined by Henry Seebohm ( Birds of Siberia and Seebohm's Wheatear ) and illustrations subsequently prepared by George Lodge.  The specimen was exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London the following month.

There are no subsequent Cumbrian records.

And so it was that when an Isabelline Wheatear appeared at Easington East Yorkshire this week, I decided to vist.

This bird also was in a newly sown field.

The black alula shows well although the white fore supercillium is muddied by the bird feeding in damp brown earth.

The pale underwing and broad black tail band shows well.

Again the tail pattern and alula show.