Ocean bird in surprise trip to M1

A SEABIRD that ought to be nesting on a remote South Atlantic island paid a surprise visit to a landlocked county in England yesterday.

The great shearwater (Puffinus gravis), normally an ocean wanderer, was spotted at Willen Lake off the M1 south of Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire - about 100 miles inland from the Suffolk coast.

Bird-watchers looked on in amazement at the long-winged rarity, which must have started life on either the South Atlantic's Tristan da Cunha or Gough Island, midway between South Africa and Argentina.

After about an hour it flew off towards Milton Keynes. Chris Mead of the British Trust for Ornithology said: "This is absolutely staggering - I don't think there have been any previous inland records of great shearwaters."