Tiny sparrow blown across Atlantic on winter winds becomes British celebrity

In the Norfolk (U.K.) village of Cley Next The Sea, a white-crowned North American sparrow (top), a rare visitor to Britain's shores, has become a magnet for pilgrimages by twitchers (bird spotters) and a fundraiser for the village's Church of St. Margaret of Antioch.

Long story short: "The bird has made only four appearances in the U.K. in the past century."

Twitcher tourists by the thousands are coming to view the seven-inch sparrow and so far have chipped in over $6,000 in donations to be used to mend the church's 14-century roof.

Here's Pat Ashworth's churchtimes.co.uk story about the avian visitation.

Helpful visitor is a rare bird

A rare sparrow’s arrival in Norfolk has given an unexpected financial boost to the parish church in Cley Next The Sea.

A white-crowned sparrow, normally found in parts of Canada and the United States, landed in the hedge of a retired priest, the Revd Richard Bending, and his wife, at Epiphany. “We felt rather privileged it had chosen our garden,” Mr Bending said on Tuesday.

He recognised that the bird was a very unusual one, and contacted members of the local bird club. Then it had to be decided how public to make the news.

“Either you tell nobody or it’s going to be a very big affair, because it’s so rare,” he said. “Fortunately, using bird feeders, we were able to persuade the bird to go regularly to a position on our driveway where the public could see it. It’s a nice thing to share with other people.”

The bird has made only four appearances in the UK in the past century. Birdwatchers turned up in droves, “not a scrum, but occasionally awkward when 150 people were trying to look at the same time”. Then the press arrived. Mr Bending praises the local bird club for its management of the situation, and the birdwatchers for their courtesy.

Birdwatchers have a tradition of putting out a bucket for a local cause when they arrive in droves to spot a rare bird. On this occasion, they chose to support the restoration of the local church, St Margaret of Antioch. “They viewed it as putting something back into the life of the village. It’s a virtuous circle and there aren’t too many of those at the moment,” said Mr Bending.

The bucket has filled up steadily, and the collection now stands at £3800. The Priest-in-Charge of Blakeney and Cley, the Revd Neil Batcock, is delighted, especially as work needs to be done on the church roof this year. St Margaret’s is regarded as a fine example of early-14th-century English decorated architecture — and on a large scale, as there was a port there.

“The bigger the church, the more there needs doing; so it’s very welcome,” said Mr Batcock.

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Wrote Lewis Smith in a January 26, 2008 story in the Times (U.K.) Online, "It is the biggest sum yet collected by bird enthusiasts, for whom it is a tradition to make a collection when they throng at a village to spot a rare bird from abroad."

Below, a photo that accompanied the Times story, captioned

"Twitchers gather to get a look at the rare North American white-crowned sparrow."

Turns out this story is old news in the U.K. — my crack research team woke from its collective stupor long enough to take a dive into the Web and bring back the following January 10, 2008 Times (U.K.) Online article about the rara avis by Will Pavia.

Crowds flock to see a US celebrity

It has already attracted hundreds of excited birdwatchers with its unlikely arrival from across the Atlantic.

Last night there were fears that the white-crowned sparrow that has arrived in the garden hedge of a retired vicar in Norfolk had also attracted the attention of the next-door neighbour’s cat.

Birdwatchers who hope the sparrow will survive cannot have been encouraged when they learnt that the cat into whose patch the wind-buffeted creature has flown goes by the name of Hooligan.

It was first spotted last Thursday [January 3, 2008] in the village of Cley-Next-The-Sea by Richard Bending and his wife, Sue, who were scratching around in their walled garden. By Friday — with the help of a birdwatching book from the library — they were puzzling over the fact that it appeared to be a creature that had no business on these shores.

By Saturday they had identified it formally and made the fact of its presence known to the wider birdwatching community, whose members began to arrive almost immediately [below].



More than 1,000 of them have now visited the Bendings’ hedge and the garden bird-feeders that the couple have set up for it, adding to a collection for the village church by way of thanks.

Birds that lose themselves so far of course seldom live long, and the birdwatchers, the vicar, his wife and the villagers of Cley are watching the bird’s every move, hoping that it may yet survive. It is not yet known whether Hooligan has been made aware of the white-crowned sparrow, but ornithologists have highlighted cats as a potential threat.

Mrs Bending, 59, a retired librarian, said: “We were quite happy to share it with the public. It was just in a position in our garden where it was not possible for people to see without inconveniencing us or frightening the bird. We moved the feeders and didn’t know if it would work, but the bird moved too. It spends a lot of time in the hedge and comes out on to the driveway where people have put down seed.”

The white-crowned sparrow lives in Canada and the western and southern United States and rarely crosses oceans. Only four have been spotted in Britain in the past century.

Hopes that this bird may survive in its new environment — and against the wiles of Hooligan — were raised by the sight of it taking up with a group of finches. Perhaps it would find safety in numbers. Meanwhile, at the house next door, Hooligan was unavailable for comment.