Mega start to the new year

New years day birding with Mark, Paz and Pete and what a start to the year, a twitch out to Fraisethorpe for a Little Bustard discovered there yesterday, it was a massive twitch as to be expected with it being the first twitchable bird for 18 years, I saw that one so this was only a year tick, but more importantly it was the first Yorkshire bird since 1956, that's even before my time, so a Yorkshire tick. It was still present this morning but just a little brown blob sat in the middle of a big green field, good scope views though as it occasionally moved about picking at the vegetation, very settled so no flight views today, not while we were there anyway.  Grindale was the next stop and a distant Buzzard looked a good candidate for the Rough Legged but ended up to be just a pale Common one, we carried on to Scarborough and after spending lunch with the Med Gulls at Holbeck, at least six today, we dropped down to an unbelievably busy seafront, we managed to get parked and checked out a fairly quiet Harbour, just a couple of Guillemots but we also had a few Purple Sandpipers and a Rock Pipit on the outer Harbour wall, we were going to check out the Peregrines next but there was nowhere to park so we decided on a steady drive home via Troutsdale instead, no Mandarins on Hackness Lake but a Goshawk was hunting over a nearby wood, at Hilla Green a couple of Buzzards were floating about and we flushed three Mandarins from the Ox-bow Lake but with dark clouds looming the light was fading fast so we called it a day.

little brown blob

always good to see

Guillemot in the Harbour