Three days on the coast (and river)

So that was Friday, Saturday, Sunday (24th, 25th, 26th) - a weird but birdy few days, blurred by a cold but not without its highlights. Strong north-westerlies were enough to persuade me to hit the coast for seawatching, and on Friday morning it was my intention (as ever when hitting the coast for a day's birding) to drive straight over pre-dawn - but not before sorting the mrs out for work after a 5.45 alarm call (yep, that's how we roll in these parts).

Feeling crappy enough to try for a bit more sleep won out, however, but was ultimately unsuccessful, and so after a few bits of office work I arrived at Filey for middayish. A quick sniff around the windswept scrub (no Northern Bullfinches or the like, sadly) preceded a four-plus-hour seawatch from my favourite spot just beneath the lip of the end of Carr Naze in an encouragingly howling north-westerly.

Not as much on the move as I'd hoped, although 83 Little Gulls offshore, single Sooty and Manx, nice wildfowl variety and a few Twite in the Linnet flock were good back-up for a personally unprecedented 13 (!) Mediterranean Gulls, all adults, all south. Crazy, and apparently Flamborough likewise enjoyed record counts.

Overnighting at Flamborough and some downtime with the folks preceded a distinctly dulled-around-the-edges Saturday, but I followed through with my plan - drive south along the coast to Skipsea for first light, thus being able to seawatch in comfort from a warm car....

Which was a very good move. Even though it kind of felt like cheating, there's no way I'd have withstood it otherwise, and I had a really enjoyable morning from the end of the road (literally) - a Little Auk close in and south just after dawn, Velvet Scoter, Sooty Shearwater, Long-tailed Duck, 21 Little Gulls, a pale-morph Pom Skua, plenty of wildfowl and more Twite on the clifftop was a quality haul, and most of it was close inshore.

Med Gulls (and dolphins)

Overnighting again in Flamborough, today was a work day on the Humber, and another very early start to begin surveying on the riverbank at Paull for first light at 0640hrs.

Skipsea yesterday morning.... 

Nothing too unusual in the bone-chilling winds, but an unexpected and quality movement of passerines, heading along the river and into the north-westerly - most notably Fieldfares, which number 460 in the first three hours.

Now? Up in a few hours for another week's guiding at Spurn... wish us luck!

... and Paull this morning

Guiding at Spurn, mid-October '25

(Click on images to enlarge) Yellow-browed Warbler in flight  

Last week I was guiding every day at the mighty Spurn Bird Observatory, for Yorkshire Coast Nature, with a different team of six (consistently lovely) clients every day. This is my fifth year running my Migration Day Specials on Spurn's hallowed soil, and last year I spent a total of six working weeks, guiding a total of 130 clients, there; more like four weeks this year, but happily it's still occupied a substantial part of my migration-seasonal guiding.

Yellow-browed Warblers

But for a few notable exceptions, it has to be said that this autumn has been very much on the low-key side for migration on the coast, and so as the week approached, the forecast was checked with increasing regularity... would it remain south-westerly with associated tumbleweed, or would there finally be a whiff of high pressure over Scandinavia with a subsequent 'unblocking' of the build-up of birds there, waiting to cross the North Sea?

Male Brambling 

Thank the birding gods, it was the very much the latter, with immaculate timing. As I drove into Kilnsea just as it was getting light on Monday morning, the unmistakable form of thrushes began to materialise out of the gloom - game on!

Goldcrests

Thus the theme of the week was, well, exactly what I hoped for during our late autumn days there - mass arrivals from the continent, in all their mercurial glory. Monday was a big day, and all subsequent days not only hosted new arrivals, but great conditions to fully enjoy what had already arrived, feeding up and showing well in calm conditions; and then Friday came around, which saw another large-scale floodgate opening of thousands of thrushes, with associated species in good numbers.

While there was nothing particularly rare this time (who cares?), there were constant, numerous opportunities to revel in a wide sprectrum of incoming migrants from far and wide, and that's effectively the perfect scenario - it's all about the context, the spectacle, and the uniqueness of the place and its birds.

Bramblings arriving in off the sea

Highlights included thousands upon thousands of thrushes - the majority Redwings, but big numbers of Blackbirds, Fieldfares and Song Thrushes, as well as Mistle Thrushes and Ring Ouzels; many Goldcrests, often so tame as to be just centimetres away; Woodcocks, Great Egrets, Peregrines, Spotted Redshank, Curlew Sandpiper;

tens of thousands of waders on the Humber; multiple Yellow-browed Warblers (a team target on several days, and several found by the team!); Jack Snipe; many Bramblings, often giving great views; Short-eared Owl, Twite with a Linnet flock, Hawfinch, Great Northern Diver....

Redwings and Blackbirds in the Obs garden (above), Brambling (likewise, below)

.... and lots more besides. Quite a week, as it always is at this time of year at Spurn. Thanks as always to the locals for being so helpful and accommodating - it really makes a huge difference ;-)

Yellow-browed Warbler (above), Whooper Swans over the Humber (below)

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.