Little Bustards are very rare visitors to the UK but luckily I saw one a few years ago in Yorkshire. When news of another one in Yorkshire broke I decided that it would be rude not to go to look at a second one, especially as this was a smart adult male bird in its finery. Initially a few weeks ago the farmer, at Mickletown near Leeds, saw a strange bird in his cattle field that he thought was a weird looking goose, little did he know that he had a mega rare visitor that would attract hordes of birders and twitchers. An hour or so from Cheshire I was soon pulling up and parking a couple of streets away from the farm fields in a residential street, a bit incongruous for a bird known to inhabit wide open plains! A mass of birders in a small viewing area made initial viewing difficult, but soon as a few dispersed everyone got reasonable views, albeit a couple of fields away, of the Little Bustard. The bird stayed in view for long periods but favoured the far edge of the field and so views were distant and through a heat haze, making picture taking very hard. A very poor record shot is attached, the bird came closer later in the afternoon, but by then I was back home in Cheshire attending to domestic duties!
