IT’S not every day you spot an Oriental Turtle Dove in the back garden.

In fact, it has only ever happened about nine times in the UK.

And for one amateur birdwatcher the sight of a turtle dove has heralded the arrival of hundreds of binocular- wielding wildlife lovers.

Steve Akers’ Chipping Norton house was besieged by 500 twitchers after word spread on the Internet about his new arrival.

The 56-year-old Unison official said: “I used to read about this kind of thing and think ‘Wow, will this ever happen to me?’ This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff.”

It is the first time the species has ever been spotted in Oxfordshire. And there has not been a sighting in the UK since 2002, when one of the doves was spotted in the Orkney Islands.

The birds breed in Siberia and normally migrate to South East Asia at this time of year.

But for the last five days a young dove has spent time in Mr Akers’ back garden in The Leys, which is normally home to UK species like woodpeckers.

He said he had a “marvellous” view of it on Monday, when it was a mere 10 feet from his kitchen window.

Mr Akers says he is not surprised by the huge queues hoping to spot the bird and is expecting even more people to visit as word spreads.

He has started charging each visitor £5 to see the bird, with the money going to conservation group BirdLife Malta.

He said: “Normally the turtle doves that we get in this country come here from Africa.

“But that’s becoming much rarer, and part of the reason is because people in Malta are blasting them out of the sky.

“They are appalling when it comes to shooting birds.”

Mark Thomas, an RSPB investigation officer from Bedfordshire, took the day off work to catch a glimpse of the rare visitor.

He said: “Rare birds turn up quite frequently, but not normally in people’s back gardens.

“And it’s even more unusual for someone to let people into their house to see the bird.

“For most people it will be a once-in-a-lifetime sighting.”

Ian Lewington, Oxfordshire bird recorder for the Oxford Ornithological Society, saw the bird on Monday.

He said: “It was fantastic.

“I’ve only seen adults in China, so it was nice to see one locally in my county.”

He said it would have been the bird’s first migration and it had probably become disorientated during the flight.

But he said the bird was looking healthy and was likely to survive, although it might struggle to get back to its Siberian breeding grounds.