Gulp! A hoopoe gets stuck into a local bird delicacy. (Pictures by Chris Bale) 1120035

THE hoopoe is one of the most exciting spring visitors to the islands.Stunning lookers, easy to identify and with a preference for well-cropped grass, their appearance in March and April always gets my telephone ringing.

‘I’ve got a hoopoe in my garden… really. I am absolutely sure.’

And with reports of a hoopoe I can be certain that this is true. No other birds can be mistaken for these exotic creatures.

The first I heard of last month was up near the Coach House Gallery, but two searches of the area failed to locate it. There were just too many well-cut lawns for the bird to choose from.

Years ago, the textbooks said ‘with a penchant for vicars’ lawns’, but as the number of rectors dwindles and our countryside becomes more urbanised, hoopoes have a wider choice when they arrive.

There are few wildlife advantages to the ‘horseification’ of our farmland but here is the exception.

Hoopoes are invariably spring visitors. They are rarely seen in the autumn for one good reason – the birds breed south of the Channel Islands and winter in the Mediterranean basin and north Africa.

In the spring, their enthusiasm to claim a territory leads some of the rather floppy fliers to overshoot their normal range. Arriving in the islands and along the south coast of England, they shake their heads in wonder, stick around for a few days and then head off southwards to their more preferred breeding range.

Once nesting is completed and the birds’ instincts kick in, they set off south for the winter and thus do not reappear in the autumn.

Chris Bale photographed the bird shown on this page at Les Adams, St Peter’s. I eventually caught up with a hoopoe found by Nick Moullin (via Jamie Hooper) at Le Prevote.

A long-staying cattle egret was developing its breeding plumage when Chris Bale took this picture.1120033

Another elusive visitor, although here for an altogether different reason, was a cattle egret, which moved around fields in St Andrew’s and the Castel.

Cattle egrets are similar to the white little egrets we have become used to on our beaches during the winter.

They are smaller, however, and, as their name suggests, like to be around cows in fields, where the birds feed on insects kicked up by their bovine buddies.

Cattle egrets have yellow beaks, all-black legs (little egrets have yellow feet) and orange in the crown, breast and mantle when in breeding plumage.

They will conquer the world soon. Great wanderers, in the last 100 years they have spread amazingly across Europe and are now breeding in Britain.

Somehow they crossed the Atlantic and I have seen cattle egrets nesting in Barbados.

I was on a ship between St Helena and Ascension Island, half-way between Africa and South America, when two appeared from the direction of Africa. They circled the top deck three times and departed towards Brazil. It is, to this day, one of the most amazing sights I have seen while at sea.

Cattle egrets have colonised the whole of Central and South America (I have seen them down in the Falkland Islands) and the US.

Firecrests are – with their cousins goldcrests – Europe’s smallest breeding birds. They are winter visitors to Guernsey and occasionally remain to breed.

Dramatic colouring – their green shoulders have a golden sheen, white faces are split by a black eye-stripe, plus a brilliant red crown-stripe in the male – and a confiding nature make them firm favourites.

When migrating through the islands they can be found anywhere from windswept cliff-top gorse beds to sheltered flower borders in tiny gardens.

Their presence in the Quanteraine Valley, St Peter’s, each winter was one of the reasons La Societe Guernesiaise set up the Silbe nature reserve. (Incidentally, alders I planted there 35 years ago were the thickness of my little finger. I can barely hug them now, so great is their girth.)

Our first land-bird summer visitor is usually a wheatear, although sand martins and swallows race them for the title.

This spring was no exception, with the first wheatear being reported by Kevin Childs at Fort Doyle on 10 March.

It had been beaten to the island by a sand martin seen by Tony Bisson at Fort Hommet the previous day.

This fine male wheatear was one of the first land-bird migrants to arrive in the island last month. 1120039

Wheatears are terrific little birds much loved by golfers (you might think the golf-finch would qualify, too) as they feed on flat ground, picking off daddy-long-legs and other insects from the grass.

They have white rumps which flash like bouncing balls as the birds fly off in front of advancing golfers, always keeping a few paces ahead.

Their old English name was derived from the white rump – folk called them ‘white arses’. Queen Victoria was reputed not to like this expression.

The name was changed subtly from white to wheat and arse to ear… easily done.It’s time to get out those binoculars and keep your eyes peeled for some feathered springtime visitors making a flying visit … some of which – whether little or large – are instantly recognisable, as Tim Earl reports‘Wheatears are terrific little birds much loved by golfers as they feed on flat ground, picking off daddy-long-legs and other insects from the grass’