Great-tailed Grackle in Speke, Liverpool

With recent reports of a long-staying Great-tailed Grackle hanging around in Liverpool, I decided to head out to Speke today to get myself another lifer.  After three hours of looking in all the reported spots, and in miserable damp, dark, drizzly weather, I still hadn't found it until I was joined by some other birders, one of whom eventually spotted it feeding in the distance though a fence bordering the nearby industrial estate. 

There was no chance of even a record shot here, and there was no access to the industrial estate. After waiting for over four hours with only a couple of brief and distant glimpses of this bird, I eventually settled on just waiting for it to come back to one of its favoured roost sites.

By now it was 4:30pm and the light was fading fast with accompanying drizzle, so I had to ramp the ISO up high to be able to see anything among the branches. It eventually returned at 4:38pm with a couple of Magpies and settled here for about two minutes, calling a couple of times before flying away to its second roost site. Five minutes later and I would have set off back across the field for home and missed it.

I'd liked to have approached a bit closer, but there were other people present and so I didn't. We had a nice craic during the afternoon so all in all a good result, despite the miserable weather.

I was quite disappointed to find out later that although the BOU has classified this as a Category E bird, it does not form part of the British List.  This is because it's not a natural vagrant, but most likely human-assisted, having probably come in on a boat via the Liverpool Docks.  

It's only the third ever record of this species in the UK, the first being in Pembrokeshire in 2023 and the second being seen currently in Hampshire. I'm told that the exact species isn't really known with a DNA sample as it ever similar to the Boat-tailed Grackle, one of which has also been seen on the south coast. Still a lifer for me though and my first of 2026!