How to cross Atlantic with minimum of wing-clapping - did Yellow Warbler take ticket to ride from Gulf of Mexico?

                                                              

Unorthodox migration route - New Hythe's Yellow Warbler savours life among English catkins

'MIGRATION'  across the Atlantic may have proved relatively leisurely for the American Yellow Warbler that has, for much of  this week, proved a magnet in New Hythe Kent, to a thousand twitchers or more.

A plausible theory is that the journey was probably accomplished on board a tanker crossing from North America to Britain.

If this is the case, the bird would most likely have landed on deck somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico - an expansive body of water habitually crossed by many New World warbler species as they migrate from breeding grounds in North America to warmer wintering climes in South America.

In autumn last year, there was an unprecedented  'fall' of such warblers on the Welsh Coast, most of them fairly near the port of Milford Haven.

'Fall' is a misnomer because, far from dropping from the sky in an exhausted state, they will almost certainly have made most, if not all, of the  Atlantic crossing on board ship, then flown off when the vessel arrived at its destination.

New Hythe is on the other side of Britain from Milford Haven but just 23 miles from the port of  Isle of Kent on Kent's Hoo peninsula.

On December 20, it was this port which welcomed the tanker, Gaslog Winchester, with its cargo of liquefied natural gas after its 14-day journey from Freeport on the Gulf of Mexico's Texan coast.

Also on board the 297-metre x 47-metre vessel would, most probably,  have been the Yellow Warbler which would have found sufficient insect prey to keep its body and soul together in readiness, when the time arrived,  to continue its journey south.

Having flown from the ship, the warbler's  resumed journey - this time by beat of its wings - will  have taken it to New Hythe where it has spent since Christmas Eve refuelling high in the branches of alder alongside a sewage treatment works to the delight of its myriad admirers.

Assuming it survives, the likelihood now is that this jewel of a bird will continue south possible as far as the English Channel and beyond.

For anyone who has not been fortunate enough to glimpse its Christmas habitat, there is still hope. It could turn up anywhere - in hedgerow, thicket, woodland, any leafy place where winter insects flourish. 

After all, needles can sometime be found in haystacks . . . 

And one other word of encouragement. Between now and January 4, three other tankers from the United States are due at the Isle of Grain.

Each will be carrying a cargo of liquefied natural gas and who knows what else?