yorkslister

Here's another shot of the Arctic Poll from last week, this one showing the undertail better, it's a digibinned shot so not much better quality wise than the vid grabs.  But shows another feature to shut up the anonymous poster/wind up merchant.

Went back down to Spurn on Wednesday but despite conditions looking really good I didn't see too much.  The Pied Wheatear and the Poll were both seen briefly early morning then not seen again all day despite much searching, strange thing is one birder jammed in on both but others weren't so lucky..........he claims to have corroborating observers!

Had a bit of work to away from home on Thurs/Fri so didn't get out.  Then most of Sat was taken up with a committee meeting at Spurn.  I managed to miss the Richards Pipit and, well everything else apart from a flock of White Fronts and Barnacles in with the Brents.

Sun involved a stupidly early morning start for a trip up to Hauxley for the Greater Legs.  Got that one wapped off pretty quickly plus the Grey Phal.  It just shows how daft this chasing rare birds thing is really, ask most birders which they'd rather see and they'd say Greater Legs but look at them together in this pic and honestly the Phal kicks the Legs arse it's so much more stunning.  Then again if they both move south into Yorks I know which one I'll be going for!!!

Phal outshining septic

Thanks to Rob Capewell for the pic.  Believe it or not it's a phonescoped pic, and it was shite light so pretty impressive.

After the Phal Legs combo we went to the best the north east has to offer, first port of call was Marden Quarry in Whitley bay for the Lesser Scaup which duly flew in after we'd been thewre about 15 mins and wouldn't come to the 2 slices of bread I threw in.  I was too tight to try enticing it with any more.  They must not feed the young uns much up there cos The KingPrawn was eyeing up my Warburtons so we fucked off sharpish.

A few White Fronts and a brief catch up with a mate of mine and we decided to hit Marsden Quarry where we found a Swift......Bollocks!

I was only saying to one of the Spurn lads the other day if I ever find a late autumn Swifty thing I'm walking away cos they are nails to ID.  I should have listened to myself cos we didn't walk away.  Instead we wasted all afternoon trying to sort it out.  The trouble was it looked brown and although I's normally say the blunt winged feature is a load of bollocks we all thought it was, it didn't have a big pale throat though, hmmm.  Anyway with the foggy conditions we failed miserably to clinch it either way.  Here's a couple of vid grabs of Jacks.

You can see it looks brown even against 

the sky in this pic!

Does this look blunt to you?

So anyway after failing to sort out the Swift and having a large Pipit fly past which had probably come in off we decided on a mad dash to another of the great scenic spots of the north east we headed south for the Semi P.  Unfortunately we'd left it too late and missed it, all we could manage were a couple of Shorties and a load of Seals.