A RARE tiny bird roused ‘twitchers’ from their weekend slumbers after it travelled thousands of miles and landed in a Worcester garden.

The yellow-browed warbler usually migrates from its home in Siberia, Russia, at the start of the winter, but was spotted rather unusually in the yard of a house in Warndon Villages at 6.30am on Saturday.

It is thought that the bird has spent the winter in Britain.

But it is unlikely that it has been in Worcestershire all that time as this is only the fifth occasion that the bird has been spotted in the county.

Dozens of bird-watchers armed with long lenses and binoculars then descended on the area over the whole weekend, keen to catch a glimpse of the pretty - and elusive – little bird which gets its name from the flash of colour over its eyes.

However, the bird may have proven too elusive for many people, as Worcestershire Wildlife Trust said it had not received any pictures of the bird as we went to press.

For Tony Wilmore, of Hastings Drive, Warndon Villages, it was the twitchers themselves who were well worth watching.

He said groups of them had flocked to the old Tolladine Road area for a glimpse of the bird.

“I was walking my dog on Saturday morning and there were all these chaps with big cameras, and pairs of binoculars hanging around their necks,” he said.

“I said to my wife ‘I don’t know about that film Day Of The Triffids, it was more like day of the twitchers in Warndon’.”

A Worcestershire Wildlife Trust spokesman said the bird was “tiny, very pretty and highly elusive” so to have one in the city was a treat.

“I think the last time we may have seen one of these in Worcestershire was at Upton Warren, near Droitwich. They’re not very common,” she said.

• Do you have any pictures of the yellow-browed warbler in the county? Email them to news@worcesternews.co.uk