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| Caton Haigh - killed rare bird with one shot |
It was on November 18, 1909, that Lincolnshire ornithologist George Caton Haigh recorded, near Saltfleetby, what was the first UK mainland example of lanceolated warbler.
He describes the finding thus: "I first observed the bird in the long grass on the side of one of the marsh drains out of which it ran on to the short grass of the adjoining field.
"I watched it for a short time as it ran about the ground like a mouse, and I noticed that it kept its tail depressed, and not erected over the back, as is usually the case with the grasshopper warbler when running over open ground.
"At one time it flew up to a barbed-wire post up which it climbed with the facility of a treecreeper.
"It soon flew back to the ground, and I shot it just as it reached the long grass again.
"Unfortunately the bird was much shattered by the shot, and I had great difficulty in making a skin of it.
"It proved to be a male, and I think adult, and was excessively fat. In appearance this bird is considerably smaller than the grasshopper warbler."
Caton Haigh, from Grainsby, near Grimsby, is also credited with finding - again on the Lincolnshire Coast - Britain's first Radde’s warbler (October 1,1898) and Greenish warbler (September 5, 1896).
As was the practice of the day, he shot these birds - and many others - prior to identification.
Many of the skins are stored by the Natural History museum at premises in Tring, Hertfordshire.
The eccentric life of Caton Haigh is described in the ebook, Shotgun Ornithologist: The Birdman of Grainsby Hall, available via Kindle (price £1).
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