Following a few decent day's weather for the East Coast, there had been a large fall of YELLOW-BROWED WARBLER plus a few other Autumn bits. We decided to head to Spurn again, where on Friday, there had been 21 YELLOW-BROWED WARBLERS, a RED-B FLY and a COMMON ROSEFINCH.
We'd all had a difficult week at work, and so what we hoped for was just a decent days birding. There's nothing quite like a bit of fresh sea air, a nice change of scenary and some birds you don't see everyday to blow away those modern day life cobwebs and make you human again instead of spending all weekend stressed and pent up still, waiting for Monday morning to come again.
We left home at 05:00hrs and parked up in the Bluebell Cafe car park at 08:00hrs. We had a quick walk up Beacon Lane, but there wasn't much to be seen. We were walking down towards the Canal Scrape carpark when a car pulled up and a birder wound his window down. It came as a complete surprise to us when he told us there was a probable BLYTH'S REED WARBLER at Easington. We headed back to the car and we soon parked up in Vicar's Lane where a small crowd were gathered, peering through a fence.
We joined them and soon had several fleeting glimpses of a large brown warbler, skulking deep inside a bush. It then flew out, flew over our heads and dropped into the bushes further along. We learnt that the original observer(s) had had good views, but no one else had views that could add to the identity. Its one we might just have to forget about, but it would have been a stonking start to the day.
We returned to the Canal Scrape, and started the birding again. We had good views of the Yellow-browed Warbler here and the colour-ringed Little Stint was on the Scrape. We had our first few winter migrants with a Brambling flying in, a few Redwings over and Brent Geese on the River. As we stood there on the bank glancing through the waders, CJW shouted out "Gannet". I laughed at him in the same way as when he shouted out "Glaucous Gull" at Westport that morning last year. We were, after all facing the River Humber well away from the coast. He repeated "Gannet" and there in front of us were eight juvenile Gannets all flying low over the mud following the river. We felt that they were possibly on the wrong side of Spurn.
We carried on our way up to the Crown and Anchor, onto the Churchyard and back to the car. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and despite the lack of birds, it was just a very pleasant stroll.
During our walk around, we spotted this Spurn birder using a new technique for checking for the more skulking species.
The bad side of modern day twitchers reared its head again on Spurn. Just look at this group of newbie twitchers. Fancy forgetting the table! Unbelievable
We returned to the Canal Scrape where the Little Stint was showing well from the hide.
Colour rung in Norway
A finally, a musical treat for you all. This video is especially for all you birders who haven't had a tick yet this Autumn.
