Spurn and Suffolk

This year's autumn trip was reduced to two nights at Spurn with Dave Craven - instead of 2 weeks on Shetland. Given how cr*p this autumn has generally been, hitting a productive period of weather was always going to be a long shot, and so it proved, with winds continuing to be from the SW or W (going N/NNE for a short period) during our stay - birding in bright sun in a t-shirt never feels promising at this time of year... Hey ho. That said, it wasn't a complete disaster! 

Our first day (Monday 24th Sept) was actually our best. Whilst doing a bit of seawatching at Numpties in the morning (god I am out of practice...), Spurn's first Yellow-browed Warbler of the autumn started calling just to the north - for a moment I thought it was going to be someone playing a call on their phone, but there it was, in classic YBW habitat - a scrappy little sycamore. Very nice.

Yellow-browed Warbler - pic by Dave Craven

15 minutes later, and a thin 'seee' call overhead had us looking upwards. It took a moment for the penny to drop, but after the bird uttered a 'pix' call, and revealed itself as a chunky finch with big white wing flashes things clicked into place - 'Hawfinch!'. Also nice! And a few minutes after this, a Common Rosefinch was found within spitting distance at the Warren, feeding unobtrusively in amongst the Good King Henry (or something similar). And in fact, there were two. So, a good 40 minute spell.

Common Rosefinch - pic by Dave Craven

Things went a bit flat after that. There were few migrants around generally, although vis-migging at Numpties was fun, and produced a few bits including single Brambling on 25th and Lapland Bunting on 26th, amongst the Linnets, Meadow Pipits and Tree Sparrows, and seeing the likes of Sparrowhawk, Kestrel, Skylark and House Martin coming in-off was also fun. And back to seawatching, I had almost got my eye back in at the end of a couple of sessions - which produced small numbers of Manxies, Arctic Skuas, Bonxies, Red-throated Divers, 2 Little Gulls, and small numbers of Common and Sandwich Terns etc.. 

Sunset over the Humber - pic by Dave Craven

So that was Spurn. This weekend just gone, and we were back in Suffolk visiting my parents. I had planned to have an early morning session birding at Landguard on either Saturday or Sunday morning, plumping for the latter, with Northerlies forecast. Two hours really wasn't long enough, and best was a 1st W male Ring Ouzel.