Twitch to Yorkshire

I don't often go twitching but the recent large number of birds down the east coast, following the prolonged east winds, turned up some real crackers.  I bumped into Graham Smith the previous day at a local Yellow-browed Warbler twitch (which failed) and heard he was travelling to Easington in E Yorkshire to see the Siberian Accentor that had been present for a few days.  This was a second for the UK, with the first only being a few days earlier on Shetland.

So Graham, Martin and myself set-off about 6:30am in the hope that the bird would remain and at about half way through out drive we had news that it was still present.  So a sigh of relief all round!  When we arrived the bird was showing well down to about 6 feet range, feeding on a driveway that was covered with moss, etc.  As we were travelling on a weekday, which was several days after the initial find, the numbers of birders present at the site was perhaps 20 or so but with a steady stream of admirers arriving from time to time.

The bird breeds across Siberia with the closest area being in the northern Urals!  So a long way from home.

Siberian Accentor - Easington, East Yorkshire

After we had seen the Accentor we walked half a mile of so to where the next rarity was.  In a ploughed field next to the coast, an Isabelline Wheatear had been found the previous day and had fortunately remained overnight.  The bird was fairly distant for much of the time and it was very windy, hence the photos are rather poor.

Isabelline Wheatear 

The wind was blowing across the field towards us, so for much of the time the bird was facing away from us!

The species breeds much further east in Turkey and further east well into Russia.  The species is very rare in the UK  but seen most, but not every year.

The same field as the Isabelline Wheatear also contained two rather distant Shore Larks, a good number of Skylarks and some Song Thrushes.  We had heard that we could get better views of Shore Larks from the car park of the Bluebell Cafe at Kilnsea, so we then moved there and were immediately rewarded with excellent views of these smart birds.

Shore Lark - One of the two present near the Bluebell Cafe.

Click on photos to enlarge.

The birding did not end here, as we headed to Alkborough Flats where the UKs first Western Swamphen had been present for several weeks.  The weather was poor, very windy and rain from time to time, plus it looked as though the water level was higher than when earlier photos were taken of the bird.  So we dipped on the Swamphen (not seen by anyone that day), but we did see about six Barnacle Geese on a distant grassy area, five Marsh Harriers hunting and a variety of wildfowl.  An excellent site.