Mega Yank in Durham

Mid-week it had come to light that a Yellow Rumped Warbler had been found in a garden somewhere in County Durham during the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch of all things, negotiations were apparently underway with the residents to gain access but there had been no developments by this morning so myself, Mark and Pete Watson stuck to our original plan of heading to North Lincs via Southfield Reservoir near Thorne, we had arrived at this site and were watching the Slavonian Grebe that is wintering there when details of the Yellow Rumped site were released.  The Twitch was on, we dropped back onto the M62 headed over to the A1 then struck north to the village of High Shincliffe just southeast of Durham itself, we arrived on site and joined the 100+ birders already there but the bird had disappeared at that point, we milled around seeing a good selection of common garden birds plus three Waxwings that had also been found then after an hour and a half or more the bird was seen again briefly in the original garden moving across the road to a hedge where feeders had been put up where it then performed admirably for the very exuberant throng of birders, Mega new bird for us all, they’re few and far between for me these days, not sure whether it is the first mainland one or not but its certainly the first one on the East Coast. Called in at Teesside on the way back starting at Ward Jackson Park in Hartlepool as Mark still needed to year tick the Parakeets, a quick stop at Newburn Bridge found the usual Med Gull and a couple of Red Breasted Mergansers on the sea, it was then on to Cowpen Marsh where we eventually found the seven Tundra Bean Geese that had been reported earlier, also a small flock of Barnacle Geese and a couple of Little Egrets out on the marsh, we finished off with a scan over Saltholme Pools from the Layby, the usual Wildfowl were present. 

with the bird in the hedge and the press of birders jostling
to get a view it was only ever going to be record shots

interesting behaviour, they were really ripping into this dead tree