Another full day birding!!

I managed another full days birding today! The Mrs and the kids all had plans that involved friends and not me so I had a full day pass!!

For a while I had been planning on visiting a few coastal sites in North Wales.  Alan Davies, he of the biggest twitch fame and tour leader with bird watching trips wrote a feature in Birdwatch magazine suggesting a number of sites worth a visit in autumn. I know its hardly autumn but I decided I'd give it a go anyway. I had no intention of visiting all the sites in Alan's itinerary and if I'm honest I was mainly just after seeing some species I don't see very often, namely Slavonian Grebe, Red-necked Grebe and Red-breasted Merganser. 

The most likely looking place based on Alan's article, and from info on twitter was Llanfairfechan. The tide looked good and was at a reasonable time so at 08:00 this morning I was Wales bound! 

The journey takes around 1 1/2 hrs so it was just before 10.00 when I arrived - needed a bit of breakfast en-route. The car park at the promenade is brilliant. You can reverse your car into the parking spaces and sit with the boot open and scope in front of you while you scan the sea. Proper armchair birding. Plus its free parking - English coastal towns take note please.

My view from the car park

Straight away it was obvious there was a good number of Great Crested Grebes about which inspired confidence that the other two target Grebe species might be around. There was a good number of sea duck out on the horizon which I assumed were Common Scoter, and a few flocks that came closer in were all that species. A nice surprise was a couple of Long-tailed Duck that gave a nice but distant flypast. I don't think I've ever seen as many Red-throated Divers in one place. There were numerous singletons plus flocks of five and six plus a huge (for me) flock of 16 flying out on the horizon. I thought I had two Slavonian Grebes in flight, but they to were distant and I couldn't hand on heart say they were definitely Slavonian.

I sat at the back of my car until around midday when it started to quieten down, and then went for a walk westwards along the coast towards the small salt marsh area. There were numerous Oystercatchers along the beach but no Snow Buntings - something I thought might have been a possibility. The salt marsh is a gem of a spot. Wigeon, Pintail, Teal and Curlew were all there in numbers plus a few Knot and Redshank. Just off the marsh small parties of Red-breasted Mergansers were loafing around. A great little spot.

Cheeky Jackdaw - love their blue eyes

Red-breasted Mergansers

Wildfowl City

By this time it was around 1pm and I needed to be heading back in a homeward direction to be sure I was back for the kids at tea time, so I decided I'd call in at Parkgate to see if there was any Harrier action. I wasn't to be disappointed. I arrived at 2.15pm and immediately noticed what looked like a 'ring tail' harrier quartering the marsh. I quickly grabbed my bins and scope out of the boot and had good but distant views of a Hen Harrier. A little later a Marsh Harrier put in an appearance, and at one point I had both Hen and Marsh Harrier in the scope at the same time. A little later and a second Marsh Harrier was found further to the north and I picked out a very distant Peregrine perched up on an old tree branch out in the estuary. Sadly virtually all the birds were too far away for any good shots but the Hen Harrier did a reasonable flyby that allowed me some record shots, and the phonescoped Peregrine at least looks like a Peregrine. Well to me it does. 

Ring tail Hen Harrier

Hovering Harrier

Distant Peregrine

 Sunset at Parkgate

Spurn

On 26th January East Yorkshire council approved the new Yorkshire Wildlife Trust visitor centre at Spurn. To say I feel annoyed or disappointed would be a huge understatement. Furious comes closer. But its done and there's not a lot I, personally, can do. It does raise a number of very interesting questions. Some would probably get me in trouble if I posted them, so I won't.

I still cannot believe that YWT have pursued this option, and that EYC have approved it despite, in my opinion, obvious conflicts with their own planning policies, and after rejecting an almost identical plan just a few months ago.

Thats enough whingeing. I'm just getting angry again.

I know a number of existing YWT members have now cancelled their membership of YWT. If thats you, can I suggest you now join Friends of Spurn? Its a lot cheaper and they will re-invest your money in habitat creation and management and providing facilities through the superb new Observatory building (developed in an existing property I should add). You get access to member only areas, and you get the top quality annual report free of charge. There's no down side. In fact even if you don't cancel your YWT membership, why not join Friends of Spurn as well anyway?

A Wild Goose / Duck / Gull Chase

I took the day off work on Friday to do a bit of birding. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going to go; I thought about the Dusky Thrush, but last time I headed that way during the week the traffic was horrendous so I chickened out. Ditto the Blue Rock Thrush. The Black-throated Thrush at Adwick was a definite contender but there was no early news so I wasn't going to risk it. I also considered my annual trip to Martin Mere where a Green-winged Teal had been putting in an odd appearance, but that was all so I decided against that too. Instead I decided to go up to the Fylde coast at Cockerham to look for the Red-breasted Goose that has been hanging around recently with the Pinks and a few Bean Geese. It wasn't that early when I arrived - probably around 08.15 - and straight away I noticed the wildfowlers had been out. They were stood at their usual parking spot obviously having finished the morning flight. I hadn't seen any geese in the fields and suspected that the shooting would have kept them off, so I turned around and went up to Thurnham where there had also been reports but again no joy. I headed back to Cockerham to see if the geese had started to settle now the wildfowlers had finished but again no signs of any geese in the fields! A little bit out of desperation I headed to Fluke Hall, an area where I've never seen anyone shooting and sure enough I found a sizeable flock of Pink-feet feeding in a distant field. Viewing was difficult as there was a hedge between us, but after spending 20-30 mins I was fairly confident I'd seen all the birds and there was no Red-breasted Goose, or Beans with them. I gave up! A quick check of twitter didn't inspire me, and with no high tide to wait for I went with my other option for the day - Martin Mere.

It took about an hour to make the journey, so I arrived just before lunch. As usual I headed straight for the Ron Barker Hide. There was a good number of Teal on the pools but after scanning several times I couldn't find any sign of the Green-winged Teal, and there were no reports from other birders either. However a Water Rail put in an appearance, as did a Marsh Harrier. After two hours enough was enough and rather than spending more time on the site I headed off to Pennington Flash to do the gull roost. A highly unusual thing for me to do.

At 3.15 I was on the south bank of the flash scanning the gulls in the hope of one of the white winged species that have been present sporadically. I was joined at about 3.30 by another Pennington regular which made the experience much more enjoyable!! An adult Mediterranean Gull was the star of the show. The large gulls were quite few in number, and the main Black-headed roost was, unusually, tucked right under the north bank instead of in the middle which made checking all the birds in that group very difficult.

Phonescoped Adult Mediterranean Gull

We also had a very unusual, very small Herring Gull. We did wonder whether we had a Ring-billed Gull. Quite a few features seemed to fit quite well, so we sent some images and some notes to the county recorder who's a bit of a Gull expert, but unfortunately he reckoned it was just a very small Argenteus Herring Gull. Disappointing but at the same time working through his comments was educational. I really should get into gulls. They provide some really challenging birding.