This diminutive yellow bird had a whole country tweeting with interest, and craning their necks up to see it perched in the tree of a local\u2019s front yard.<\/p>\n
Around 300 bird watchers crowded a road in the northern city of Sheffield, where a scarlet tanager was first spotted perched on a clothesline.<\/p>\n
It is thought the small yellow and black bird arrived in Britain after being blown off course by strong winds from a hurricane in North America. The last time this species was seen in Britain was back in 2014.<\/p>\n
The migratory pattern of the scarlet tanager typically involves a straight north-south line from as far north as Maine to as far south as Ecuador. According to the Ohio Ornithological Society, by October the tanager is making its way back south from the mid-Atlantic\u2014the same month when the southeastern United States was battered by successive hurricanes.<\/p>\n
75-year-old Dave Stone said he had traveled 280 miles from his home in Exeter to the road in a community called Bridle Dene in the early hours of Tuesday with three of his pals all just to see it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe left Exeter in Devon at 2 am. We got up here at first light. It\u2019s near enough the furthest I\u2019ve traveled [to see a rare species],\u201d he told British media outlet SWNS. \u201cI\u2019ll wait until the light goes to see it and then we\u2019ll go back again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this since 1985. If I get this bird, it will be my 500th. There have been quite a few rare ones,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s been seen this morning, and it would be a new bird for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Near the other side of the age spectrum, birdwatcher Joe Eckersley traveled around 40 minutes from his home in Leeds to see the rare bird on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought I\u2019d see a scarlet tanager in the UK, let alone in Yorkshire,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably been here since October. I think the most likely thing that\u2019s happened is it will have been blown off course by a hurricane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re flying and you only weigh a couple of grams, it is easy to be blown off course by hurricane-force winds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joe said the last sighting of a scarlet tanager was on the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides in 2014, but this is the first time the bird has been seen in mainland UK since a brief appearance in Cornwall in the 1980s.<\/p>\n He said scores of people had made their way to the quiet road in West Yorkshire to try and catch a glimpse of the rare visitor.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was there, there were about 60 or 70 people waiting around,\u201d Joe remembered.<\/p>\n \u201cWe left because we weren\u2019t going to get a better view of it, but a friend who is there has sent me a picture and it looks like the number of people has doubled. There\u2019s at least 100 people there.\u201d<\/p>\n