East Coast

East coast today with Andy, called off at Forge Valley en route to Troutsdale where Marsh Tit was a year tick but there was nothing much happening down Troutsdale so we soon moved on to Scarborough, took a quick look at the Lake at Hackness as we passed but it was frozen so no Mandarins today. At Scarborough the pair of Peregrines were on the cliffs along Marine Drive but there wasn’t much on the sea apart from a fairly active pod of Harbour Porpoises, the Harbour also held very little, we carried on to the Seamer Road Retail Park where some Waxwings have been feeding over the past few days but they had been flushed by a Sparrowhawk and although they eventually returned the place was so busy they never settled for more than a few seconds at a time, we took lunch with five Med Gulls at Holbeck, three adults and two first winters. After lunch we high tailed it over to Bempton Cliffs where the Desert Wheatear performed admirably again, also lots of Fulmars on the cliffs and a few Gannets have returned already, after checking news we then headed inland to Tophill Low for the Cattle Egret, upon arriving at the farm by the entrance gate where it had been reported from we bumped into Mark who had been there for half an hour or more with no sign of it and he was hanging around hoping the bird might return however another birder leaving Tophill informed us that it had moved back to Hempholme and looked settled, it was a 30-40 minute walk from the reserve so with light fading fast we decided to take a chance and drive round which was quite a trek in itself, anyway it paid off for as we got to the last couple of farm houses along the lane there it was strutting around a field next to the road.