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Flamborough Foot-it Part 4: Seawatch Surprise
Tue 7th Oct, 2014
Flamborough Foot-it
Weeks 4 and 5
Within a matter of a day, weather systems can change. From a mild few weeks full of gulls and scarce songbirds it was all eyes seaward as the seawatching heavens opened on 21st September. Unfortunately I was away, so missed some crippling species such as Fea’s Petrel! But the next morning was still productive and gained me five new foot-it ticks in Pomarine Skua, Barnacle Goose, Red-breasted Merganser, Tufted Duck (not easy here) and best of all a male Snow Bunting which dropped in on the cliff in front of us, fresh from the Arctic!
I finally got my rare seabird reward on 24th when a Sabine’s Gull flew north in the evening, a great bird for my list! Part of the attraction of seawatching on good days is just enjoying the vast numbers of birds passing by. This has certainly been the case on several days in the past couple of weeks. On 21st September 12,727 birds were recorded passing the seawatching point in just under 10 hours! This was certainly helped by a massive total of 7824 Little Gulls.
The great joy of a foot-it is the earth under my boots and no driving. However it can be very frustrating when I am at the wheel and see good new birds but can’t count them! This has happened twice, with a Hobby flying past my car when I was only 200 m away from my house, and two Jays over the car whilst driving out of the village! As Unlucky Alf would say: “Bugger!”
On the conservation front, fund-raising is going well with confirmation that we have just received a donation which will help us do a lot of new habitat work at Thornwick Pools this winter. We are very excited about this. Watch out on the Flamborough Bird Observatory website for more news soon…
At the end of week 5 my total is 140 species - going well with many common birds still to tick!
For all up to date daily sightings keep an eye on the Flamborough Bird Observatory website here:
Richard Baines
richard.baines@yorkshirecoastnature.co.uk
Flamborough Conservation Working Group