Lifer

A lifer is a term given to a bird that you have seen for the first time in your life. 
This was the case today. The bird is a  
Hume’s Leaf Warbler, and that is what these birdwatchers are looking at. We are in Clennon Valley Lakes in Paignton. The Lakes and surrounding area are a designated County Wildlife Site, and are Torbay’s most important wetland site.It is regularly visited and monitored more or less daily by members of the Friends, hence the awareness of the presence of this small bird, with two whitish wing bars, greenish grey upper parts, an indistinct crown stripe, and conspicuous white tips to the innermost flight feathers.  It is the 6th individual of this species  ever recorded in Devon, and has migrated from China, and gone NW, instead of S or SE. It breeds in alpine shrubbery in mountain ranges flanking the Tibetan plateau, and winters mostly in the plains just south of the Himalayas, so it is far from home. First seen on the 6th December.
Jacqui helps every month with conservation work and loves the place, so she was very  pleased to go today and find it was still there, flitting about in the trees, among the remaining leaves.
The English name commemorates Allan Octavian Hume, (1829-1912) a British civil servant and ornithologist based in India. Amazing how interesting a bird can be, and what you can learn from it.