Geoffrey King, who has been birding for 15 years, made a 354km journey from Weybridge in Surrey in the early hours of Monday.

He arrived at 9:30 a.m., but had to wait five hours before the bird appeared. “It was very exciting,” he told the BBC.

Mr King, 67, was packing up his equipment and ready to leave when the songbird finally arrived.

He said: “I had pretty much given up. Someone called and he was there at the top of the tree. It was a great relief to see him.

The scarlet tanager was the 478th species spotted by Mr King in the UK, he said.

Another bird enthusiast, Paul, who did not give his last name, said it was his first sighting of the species in nearly five decades of birding.