Wednesday 26th September 2012

September 27, 2012 • Leave a Comment

A wild, wet, week ahead - but Wednesday was just fine by me!

Firstly it's always nice when a birding magazine drops through the letterbox but especially so when one of my photos is published. Remember the barred warbler at South Gare?

Barred Warbler BirdWatching magazine October 2012. Not earning a living yet!!

Wednesday 26th September - Back to Spurn!

Forgot to include this last time. Between Kilnsea and the Warren are two new mobile radar stations. Military invasion expected? Conspiracy theories abound. I saw two men by one of the things so went over to ask what they were tracking. Surprise, surprise! Tracking the arrival of pink-footed geese!!

To get to Spurn I drove through one cloudburst and a couple of heavy showers but it always looked brighter in the direction I was heading. In fact, once I had arrived the sun came out, the temperature eventually hit 18 degrees and all was right with the world. I saw robins [lots of them, presumably passing through]...

Robin Robin and flycatchers at the Crown & Anchor car park. All three flycatchers, pied, spotted and red-breasted. It must puzzle novice birders: the spotted flycatcher wasn't spotted...

Spotted Flycatcher Pied Flycatcher The red-breasted flycatcher didn't have a red breast...

Red-breasted Flycatcher Red-breasted Flycatcher ...and the pied flycarcher refused to pose for me. A birder said he was off to the gas terminal as a rose-coloured starling [which wouldn't have been rose-coloured, by the way] had been reported. We didn't find it but I saw 5 whinchats perched together on a fence. This birder then announced that there was a 'pg tips at the Jewish Cemetery', Hartlepool Headland. This was new birdspeak tto me. Was he talking about a tea party? Anyway with all the floods the A1 being closed another birder said the A19 would be a car park. The bird didn't stay long.

I heard about PG Tips a lot that day. It's twitchspeak for Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler, certainly a mouthful. When I started birding I had to learn all these:

blackwit; barwit; gropper; slavgreb; woodsand; greensand; pecsand; comic tern; marlow tit; willowchaff; yellowbrow; spotfly; piedfly; blackstart; rouzel; LRP; yaffle; bonxie; mippit; crest and no doubt there are many others. Let me know if you want a translation!

Oh yes, the reason all those birds aren't rose-coloured, red-breasted or spotted is because they are juveniles except for the spotted flycatcher where the youngsters are the most heavily spotted.

Redstarts were everywhere down at the Point. Near the Heligoland Trap...

Redstart Redstart ...on the old wartime concrete bunkers...

Redstart ...and in the bushes.

Redstart Migrant hawker dragonflies abounded but never stopped still whilst common darters happily rest in the sunshie.

Ruddy Darter We found a big fat caterpillar on privet at the Point. Privet Hawk Moth? I wait for ispot to let me know. Yes, it is sphinx ligustri in Latin. Thanks to David Notton on ispot.

Privet Hawk Moth Whilst at the far end the pager announced a greenish warbler at the Riverside Hotel, Kilnsea. This is a bird I have twice spent hours hoping to see. I drove back along the bumpy road to Kilnsea. Lots of cars had gathered as if they had brought hungry newspaper reporters and paparazzi photographers.