Monday, 11 September 2017

Migfest

I spent Saturday and Sunday morning at Spurn helping with 'Migfest' or the Migration Festival to give it its full title. I have never been to this event before. It always struck me as a great event, but not something for me - I like it when its quiet on the people front.  However, when the late Andy Roadhouse asked me if I wouldn't mind helping out this year, of course I said yes.

I was down to help leading a couple of guided walks, one around the Triangle on Saturday morning, the other around Kilnsea Wetlands and Beacon Lane on Sunday morning. There were quite a few people turned up on the Saturday morning, sadly the weather didn't encourage many birds to show themselves - a very stiff south westerly meant many birds were keeping a low profile, and a high tide meant there were few birds on the estuary either. But, we managed to find a few bits including three Whinchats - my first for the year.

A Wryneck had been found on the Friday and after the walk I accompanied a few of the guests up to where the bird had been showing. Sadly I didn't see it at this attempt.

I spent the afternoon mooching around, helping direct visitors and re-visiting the Wryneck to see if I could finally catch up with it, which I did eventually.




I'd just got back to the Observatory for a brew when the call came out that a Long-billed Dowitcher had been found on Holderness Field so a quick march up the road and across to the field was in order. There was quite a crowd so my initial views were quite restricted, however I eventually got a better spot and had great views of it, along with a Greenshank and Little Stint for size comparisons.







Once again I had left my phoneskope attachment in the car (need to start keeping this round my neck or something), so had to make do with holding the phone to the eyepiece. I was pretty pleased with the results.

I was all done and dusted with my second walk by 09.00am on the Sunday and as I had family commitments later in the day I decided to leave early. There were still good birds about, thankfully nothing I hadn't seen before, so the Migfest visitors had another good day.

Migfest is a brilliant event. The range of talks, demonstrations and walks means there's something for everyone and I'd highly recommend it.

Overall a great weekend and hopefully a nice little taster of things to come when I go back in a few weeks.


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