Check your Blackbirds! New YCN blog

My latest blog for the Yorkshire Coast Nature website has, like a Rouzel in a rainstorm over Spurn, just dropped... there may be a clue as to its contents there (and indeed above), but either way, you can find it HERE.

Filey migration, 18th October 2025

After a great week of guiding many lovely clients at Spurn, I got back to York late on Friday - and with conditions looking promising for Saturday, I couldn't resist a quick turnaround, and headed for back to the coast for a pre-dawn start on Carr Naze.

South-easterlies and low cloud (and even a little drizzle) promised much, and delivered, to a degree; not a major fall as hoped, but plenty to enjoy and plenty and arriving through the course of the morning:

Stars of the show (of which there were many, as ever on a quality migration day) included: hundreds of thrushes - mainly Redwings, but also plenty of Fielfares, Song Thrushes and Blackbirds, and single Mistle Thrush and Ring Ouzel; a Lapland Bunting in off the sea (with Redwings!); two vocal Yellow-browed Warblers in Arndale; an acredula Willow Warbler; plenty of Bramblings and Chaffinches, plus Twite, Siskins and Redpolls; a fly-by Long-tailed Duck;

... and no quality late autumn day back at filey is complete without a Snow Bunting, and this beautiful female was characteristically mega-tame on Carr Naze.

A lovely six-hour session, and hopefully a harbinger of more action upcoming....

(Pics - Snow Bunting, thrushes and Starlings arriving, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Fieldfare)

Migweek talk videos

This one's for the folks who were good enough to attend my Filey Migration Magic talk last night at Flamborough. Due to tech issues the videos wouldn't play, and so, as promised, I'm posted them here for your pleasure! 

First up is 60 seconds of Swift mayhem from 28th June 2020, filmed with my crappy mobile phone (as all the below were), during an insane and unforgettable period for visible migration at my Muston Sands watchpoint, just south of Filey town. Sound up, full screen, and try and imagine this continuing, without a pause, for several hours.....!

   

Here's the first short clip of Goldcrests arriving in off the sea at the tip of Carr Naze (literally dropping out of the sky), contact-calling with each other, and collectively filtering along the cliff and inland - again, turn the sound up, and see how many you can count (I think there's at least five, but maybe more...?):

   

Here's the second one as promised, of a single Goldcrest which, to my absolute shock and delight, used me as a 'stepping stone' towards taller, safer vegetation - this happened again an hour or so later!:

   

Here's the longer of two clips featuring the flood of thrushes - Redwings, Blackbirds, Song Thrushes and Fieldfares - arriving in off the sea at Carr Naze, Filey, in challenging conditions on the very same day:

   

 ... and finally, here's a four-second clip, taken literally as I got out of the car just as it was coming light that morning on Carr Naze:

 

Thanks again for coming, folks, thanks FBO for inviting me, and I hope everyone has a great Migweek 2025!

The needle and (no) damage done

Scarborough, fair - White-throated Needletail, Castle Hill 

It took a while to get there, but all's well that ends well, eh? As regular readers know, I'm not much of a twitcher, but when it's such a dream bird and it's likely the one and only time it's going to grace your coastline in a lifetime, then the stakes inevitably rise....

It's been an increasingly frustrating few days, with the first (explosive) report from Tophill Low coming out some time after the bird had departed from its cheeky half-hour feeding session over O reservoir (for presumably benign reasons, knowing the good people there) on Wednesday. 

Its subsequent appearance at Bempton Cliffs several hours later was just too late for me to realistically make it before dusk, even if the A64 was on my side and traffic coppers were elsewhere. At least a couple of good friends connected and I could enjoy it vicariously....

Last seen attempting to alight on the cliffs to roost - and with god knows how many people* lining the clifftop path, waiting for it to reappear in the twilight of the following morning's pre-dawn - it was, amazingly, reported from Aberdeenshire (!) a few hours later - that's a hell of journey for anyone, but when you're a Needletail, all bets are off.... 

(*edit - apparently over 300)
 

Then, nothing. Fast forward to yesterday evening, and incredibly, it'd returned to the Yorkshire coast; this time to Filey, but the reporting of its presence was delayed long enough to put many hopefuls out of the race, and resulted in an aborted attempt to make it over there after a long-ass day at work before the sun went down and the bird drifted away. So close, so far away...

But the birding gods were clearly in justice-delivering mood, at least where I was concerned, and today was another day. I was working from home in the morning, the Mrs had a rare weekday off, and we were planning on an afternoon trip over the coast. Mid-morning, and hello! - guess what's buzzing around the Castle in Scarborough? Reported swiftly via the bird news services (thanks Ben, and well done!) I, er, strongly encouraged us to bring our journey forward by a couple of hours....

An hour or so later (via some nerve-shreddingly slow traffic) and we parked up on Marine Drive - and above us, in blue skies and skimming just above the crumbled sandstone walls of the castle, there it was. We enjoyed a perfect half hour with the bird, feeding right over our heads after we'd hiked up the side path most of the way up Castle Hill, with ideal weather, a small number of chilled fellow birders, and what turned out to be immaculate timing - by midday, it'd drifted north and beyond the town, for destinations unknown.

Celebratory lunch followed by ice-cream (soft scoop lemon from the Harbour Bar, of course) and a stroll around the harbour followed, bookending a pretty much perfect conclusion to a nervily arduous couple of days. A great bird, and a great day, on our beloved Yorkshire coast. 

Flamborough & Bempton guiding, late Sep / early Oct '25

Barred Warbler, Flamborough 

I've just finished up my autumn guiding days at Flamborough and Bempton - five days over the last seven - and there was lots to enjoy (as ever), and lots of lovely clients to share it with (as ever ;-).

Siberian Stonechat, Bempton 

Rarer birds we enjoyed included a particularly lovely Siberian Stonechat (keeping very close company with a Whinchat at Bempton, for excellent instruction / educational opps!), Barred Warblers (at Bempton and Flamborough) and Yellow-browed Warblers, while other highlights included cliff-face Goldcrests (see below), continental Robins and Song Thrushes, frolicking Bottlenose Dolphins on several occasions, Great Egrets, Caspian Gulls, Marsh Harriers and much more.

Barred Warbler, Bempton

Two Goldcrests on the cliff-face at Bempton on the afternoon of the 2nd were a thrill to witness. Arriving in a howling south-westerly - i.e. a headwind challenging enough for birds hundreds of times their size - these tiny warriors of migration (weighing in at about the same as a 20p piece and about as long as your thumb) successfully battled in from over the North Sea and onto the welcoming terra firma of the Yorkshire coast.

Pitching onto the relative shelter of the 100-metre-plus cliff-face before even reaching the sanctuary of the nearest bushes (just 30 metres or so inland) tells you how desperate they must've been; but they made it nonetheless, and we marvelled at them as they searched the cracks and weeds for tiny insects below us as we peered over the edge of the platform at Bartlett Nab.

Bottlenose Dolphins, Flamborough

All my autumn 2025 dates are now sold out, but if you'd like to join me on my Winter Wetland and Woodland days at the fabulous Tophill Low reserve in East Yorkshire, have a look HERE.

Boat trip Casps - Sep '25

A couple of sharp and stylish Caspian Gulls from recent boat trips, just because, well, they're sharp and stylish....

Road to nowhere - Skipsea, 17th Sep '25

After overnighting at Flamborough, an afternoon and evening surveying on the Humber yesterday; with an hour or so to kill on the way down the coast, I approached the road which falls straight into the sea just beyond the Skipsea village - ideal. With a strong south-westerly and a swirling cloud fronts, I expected little, but parked up by the sheer drop and took a lunch break.

Little Gull (above), Osprey (below)

Just over an hour or so later, and I'd an Osprey in off the sea and south-west, several Little Gulls and Arctic Skuas, a trickle of Swifts in off and over the sea, Arctic, Common and Sandwich Terns, Red-throated Divers, dark-bellied Brent Geese and more, mostly moving south into the wind; one of those fruitful bonus sessions that happily occur once in a while, reminding you that migration is marching on regardless of the conditions.

Common Tern

Gannet and Arctic Skua (above), dark-bellied Brent Geese (below)

Osprey, Swift, Little Gull