OUR interest in birds occurs on a variety of levels, and what label people choose to give themselves is often an indication of what sort of bird fan they are.

Someone who hangs peanuts and fat-balls outside their kitchen window in order to enjoy the antics of common garden birds would probably call themselves a bird lover.

A person who travels with binoculars now and again to nature reserves is likely to be a self-confessed birdwatcher, whereas a qualified bird scientist, we’re all agreed, is an ornithologist.

There is also a group of enthusiasts out there who are more than mere birdwatchers but not quite ornithologists; they call themselves birders and a lot of them around Ryedale are very excited at the moment because of the unusual birds that have been turning up.

Most birders have a “life list” which consists of the names of all the bird species they have ever seen in the UK and/or world.

Common birds are easy to add to the list but very shy or rare species usually end up being much more elusive “ticks” in the book.

Some British birds, for instance, don’t live in Yorkshire at all so Ryedale birders need to travel if they wish to see them – down to Cornwall for a cirl bunting perhaps, or up to the west coast of Scotland for white-tailed eagles.

Hardcore birders that go to extreme lengths to see a new bird are sometimes called twitchers, presumably because their obsession causes them to develop nervous ticks.

The birds that inspire the most interest in birders are the rarest of all – the ones that shouldn’t really be here at all but have ended up on our shores, either through desperation, or completely by accident.

Occasionally, winter food supplies for some species run out in continental Europe causing large numbers of birds to fly over to Britain in search of sustenance.

This phenomenon is called an irruption and it is happening famously at the moment with hawfinches, as described by Robert Fuller in these very pages just last week.

I am very pleased to say that I saw my first-ever hawfinch one day last month in Thornton-le-Dale but, by pure coincidence, the previous day I was privileged to see a much rarer bird near the Abbey at Whitby.

It was a desert wheatear which, as its name suggests, would normally come no nearer to Yorkshire than North Africa or the Middle East.

This lone bird was here completely unintentionally and will be lucky to find its way home, but in the short-term seemed to enjoy being well-fed on mealworms by friendly photographers. Lost birds like this are known as vagrants and are often blown off-course during migration by strong, unseasonable winds.

That probably wasn’t the case with Whitby’s errant desert wheatear though as experts think that this young and inexperienced male bird was just rubbish at navigation.

Other vagrants around our area at the moment are....a ring ouzel at Brompton by Sawdon (with some hawfinches), a great grey shrike in Langdale Forest and a spectacular smew on Castle Howard Lake.

Over on the coast, birders have been entertained by a surf scoter at Scarborough and a pomarine Skua at Flamborough, while a firecrest, glaucous gull and Iceland gull have all been spotted near York.

Not having particularly “twitchy” tendencies myself, I haven’t been to see any of these birds but I know that they are here because I’ve tapped into a very efficient system of communication that our local dedicated birders use … the internet.

What used to be done by phone hotline is now accomplished on social media with blogs and twitter feeds keeping people updated minute by minute.

If you’re interested in monitoring our current local rarities then NorthYorkBirdNews on Twitter seems to be the best source of information.

Postscript – sadly, but predictably, the desert wheatear never made it home.

Four of his tail feathers have been found, indicating that most of the rest of him probably ended up in the stomach of a predatory bird. A local sparrowhawk is the prime suspect.