ORTOLAN BUNTING

The Ortolan Bunting is a passage visitor to the UK from Europe which makes it a nice rarity to see during autumn migration. It spends the Summer months in most of mainland Europe before departing to tropical Africa for the Winter. So when three individual birds were found by a birder called Dante Shepherd above Merthyr just off the Heads of the Valleys road in early September myself and once again my great birding friend Steve Bool went up to hopefully see them and add them to our now ever growing British list.

The weather was a bit dreary when we got there on that morning, a bit misty and damp and the light wasn't great. We walked down the side of an old railway track to where the birds were last seen and our luck was in as one of them was perched up on a small berry tree. We got our gear ready a bit sharpish where by now it had dropped down to the floor where it was feeding on grass seeds.

our first ortolan bunting

Steve the master digiscoper soon had the Ortolan Bunting in his sights and this is one of his short vids he took of the bird.

The bird was moving along a grass banking so we could see it pretty well, I'm thinking it's a first Winter bird but I could be wrong.

Here's a couple more of Steve's clips and photos that I took.

ortolan bunting

what a gorgeous looking bunting

We were there for an hour or so when the weather started to close in and the bird had gone out of sight so we decided to call it a day and head home, happy that we'd seen it and very happy that we had managed to get some decent pictures and footage of this super little passage migrant.