cliftonbirding: Club Trip

I had been volunteered to lead the York Bird Club outing today and along with Mark I met up with a further seven members at the usual meeting point in town, the trip was down for North Lincs but as nothing much had been reported from there recently we thought we might fare better on the East Coast. We headed off to Flamborough and took a walk around the Headland first, highlights were a female Smooth Newt walking across the path to the Foghorn Station, a female Black Redstart in the garden there, a Sand Martin through and a Peregrine over Selwick Bay, then with news of a Hooded Crow by the Golf Course we took a walk along the cliff-top path, it was good to see the Puffins back in numbers now but it was only Mark, who was a little way ahead of the rest of us who saw the Crow before someone coming the other way flushed the whole flock and they all disappeared across the fields, we hung around a while hoping it may return but it didn’t. We went round to North Landing next and had a wander around the Thornwick Bay area, the wetland pool was fairly quiet just a couple of Shelduck along with the usual stuff but a few Toads were on the paths to continue with the Amphibian theme, singles of Grey Plover and Snipe flew over calling and down the cut to the beach several more Sand Martins and a pair of Stonechat entertained, we then took a walk along Holmes Gut searching for an earlier seen Willow Warbler but we only managed a couple of Chiffchaffs. Mid-afternoon we decided to try our luck and see if we could find any migrants at Bempton, we stopped off for a look over the fields at the northern end of Danes Dyke en route, the favoured area of the Hooded Crow and as luck would have it there it was, and very smart it looked too, Bempton itself was fairly quiet migrant wise, we had a stomp around looking for Wheatear to no avail but then as we were walking back the other way some of the club had a male Ring Ouzel fly in off the sea, it was seen to go down into the small dell just east of the car park and as we gathered around a loud chakking came from one of the bushes, as I moved round I got a brief view of it as it flew out and dived into a dense stand of Gorse, we staked it out for a while but it was either sitting very tight or had managed to escape without us seeing. Not being able to come up with anything else to do we called it a day and took a steady drive home.

female Smooth Newt, we thought this may have been Palmated
at the time but checking ID when I got home I thought it more
Likely to be Smooth, I stand corrected if anybody knows any better