You win some, you lose some

Having wasted a good chunk of last weekend not seeing the Little Swift on Merseyside last weekend, I am not going to waste much more time on this post.

Suffice it to say, the bird done the dreaded Fri night flit having been reported all week. Typical.

We (me, Dick and Steve) spent 8 hours on the motorway, intersected by 5 hour mostly spent (with a good 50 others) in Morrisons car park, New Brighton, checking out the same swifts/house martins over and over again, until it became clear that the bird was not there.

We thought we had the bird almost as soon as we arrived. Steve called a bird from the car, over one of the churches. We jumped out as it headed away in the distance. It appeared to have a white rump, and no white belly. We jumped back into the car and pursued it, but lost it almost immediately. Surely that was it we thought. With no photos, and no further sign though, we concluded it must have been a distant housemartin, with the light playing tricks on us.    

Now I am not going accuse people of reporting a bird that they have not seen, or should I say not 100% sure what they've seen, but it was interesting to speak to a local who had been on site every day last week, and he said after last weekend it had not seen it once, despite it being reported from where he was. Interesting?  

Anyway, there's no point getting the hump. There'll be another one, one day. I just hope it is tracked down to a roost and I can get there for 1st light.