Dusky Thrush!

Whoa, let's try to start this blogging thing again...

Last Saturday I was out birding by the coast with mom and a friend (not seeing any birds, it was so foggy! We could hear singing Long-tailed Ducks through the mist though...) when I checked the phone and saw that a Dusky Thrush had been seen in Uppland...
Since I've seen alerts for this bird before and they've turned out to be mis-identified Fieldfares I decided to wait for another alert to confirm the report.
And it came. So... here we were, pretty far away (now in the middle of the forest a little bit from the coast) trying to figure out whether we would have the time to get to the thrush before dusk. It didn't look very good, but mom and I decided that what the heck? and drove off. Let our friend off in Uppsala since she's not really the twitching type and hit the roads while trying to figure out exactly where the thrush had been seen. Good thing was that it was very close to a place where we had been birding before (best place for Mistle Thrush in winter) so we found it pretty easily. But now it was about 3.40pm and the sun was starting to set. So... of course... no bird. I did see a thrush in the tree, but it was way too dark to see any details. Could have been anything.

Next morning it was up early to get to the place at daybreak!
Got there just as it was getting light, and as we got out of the car we got an alarm: the bird had been seen. Great! Got to the place and whoa! So many people, much more than yesterday! There were people there who had driven all night from Skåne and Sundsvall...
Found a not-so-great spot and started searching the trees. The bird had mostly kept to a few tall cypress-like trees from where it occasionally jumped out to some kind of crabapple tree to eat.
Well, to cut a long story short I did finally see the bird, but it did take until 10:30am, a bit of running around since the bird had relocated (and then giving up on the running around since it was so confusing and instead getting back to the first place, grabbing a really good spot) and lots of waiting before the bird finally showed. It was really skulking, only showing for brief moments so you had to be fast. Despite the big crowd everyone seemed to behave very well, there was no pushing or shoving to see the bird. After seeing it four times, the last time well in my scope I decided to leave my spot for others who might not have seen it yet.

A nice twitch in rather cold and dreary weather, but who cares when you get to see a great bird and talk to loads of people you don't meet that often? (I sometimes think that one of the best thing about twitches is that it gathers all birders in one location... otherwise you usually just meet one at a time!)

Didn't have a chance to get a photo of the bird, so here's a link to photos taken by others.