Spurn Migfest 2017

Glad to be back home after another brilliant Spurn Migfest weekend. So many stories to tell but in short - great birding, good time with friends old and new, fantastic talks (hope mine was good too?), incredible young birders and lots of smiling faces. Stellar job, as always, by Spurn Bird Observatory team, BTO, RSPB, Migfest volunteers, Westmere Farm - congratulations!
For me, personally, it was a charged weekend. Last time I was here, in 2015, I spent most of my time with Martin. Since then also Andy had passed away and the gap in the Spurn heart seems to have increased even more. But Migfest team, led by chairman Rob Adams, certainly made this weekend so good for me - thank you!
Birding was very good - beyond weather-expectations. On Saturday morning vismig was brilliant with huge numbers of Meadow Pipits, hirundines and Tree Sparrows going through. I heard one Richard's Pipit call but nothing more than that. Other vismig and seawtching highlights were Roseate Tern (sweet call! First time I hear it), several Short-eared Owls and two Bonxies.

Short-eared Owl

Tree Sparrows

Great Spotted Woodpecker working the fence poles by Numpties. Yummy grubs!

Then I lead a walk with Terry. Five minutes after starting news broke of the headline bird of Migfest - Long-billed Dowitcher at Corner Pond / Holderness Fields. Brilliantly picked up on call by Paul - legend! We did make the group run a bit; completely ignored a cracking juv Little Stint en route. By the time we got there quite a crowd had already assembled. Great bird - distant views though.

Long-billed Dowitcher

Digiscoping results were not much better

Dowitwichers (copyright Jonnie Fisk)

The great Darren Woodhead in action. That's how far the bird was

After a few minutes of admiring this beauty of a shorebird, we moved on to look for the Wryneck at the top of Beacon Lane. We saw the bird immediately as it was feeding on aphids. As I was leading I spent no time on photography, hence the poor photo. Others got some great photos and footage of this cooperative bird.

Then a few minutes of seawatching produced Little Gull and 2 Arctic Skuas. Not a bad walk... And look at this daily summary, complete with a swallow:

Enjoyed this brilliant Comma sunning itself

On Sunday morning I helped with ringing at Church Fields. Pretty quiet but nice to see the Caspian Gull fly over, first seen over Numpties a few minutes before. This female Migrant Hawker was sweet:

Perhaps my best photo of the weekend was taken on Friday morning near Kings Lynn - while waiting at a meeting point to swap cars this Muntjac sped across a cut wheat field in the warm morning sun. Stunner. 

East Hills

Nice day on East Hills today - another one of those sites I had heard so much about. Low tide was at midday so we were forced to a late start, which was a good excuse for us lazy and mildly hung-over birders not to make an early start. The weather was brilliant, too brilliant in fact - pretty strong easterly but sunny and warm, but no rain. We parked at Warham Green and had a look around - some migrants there, including 2 Pied Flys, Spotted Fly, Redstart and I also heard a Yellow-browed Warbler. Two Spoonbills were on the saltmarsh. We headed off towards East Hills and the walk was rather quiet, a few Wheatears and a Whinchat, and some Greenshanks in the creeks. East Hills themselves felt rather quiet, but eventually we picked up some migrants in OK numbers. Some of my UK friends called it a fall but it certainly didn't feel like one, birds were quite few and far between. Total migrant numbers were 10-12 Pied Flys, 20 Wheatear, 5 Redstart, 2 Spotted Flys, 1 Reed Warbler (sadly just an out-of-place Reed Warbler), which is alright I guess but not more than that. One Hobby flew over and on the way back I flushed two Short-eared Owls - they flew off with the wind directly into the sun, and all I managed was some distant record shots, but they were the highlight of the day.

Pied Flycatcher

Wheatear

 Common Redstart

Short-eared Owl

Many thanks to Keith, Reg and Dougal for the great company.

Short-eared Owl

No, this is not a Short-eared Owl, it's a Short-toed Eagle. But while doing an atlas box this morning with Rafi Paz at Lahav reserve we flushed a Short-eared Owl from the ground; found no nest, probably a late migrant. Managed to confirm breeding of Long-billed Pipit (three territories), about 10 families of Spectacled Warbler, some in second breeding cycle - those were the highlights.

Festival update - day 4

I had a rather relaxed day today. In the morning I led a half-day tour. We began at the IBRCE which is always fun to visit. The ringing team had just caught a Short-eared Owl - what a fantastic bird! I missed adding it to my ringing list by just a few minutes...

Other good birds around were a couple of flyover Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters, and the long-staying Red-necked Phalarope. After that we climbed up to the Eilat mountains where we had massive raptor migration, with several thousand Steppe Buzzards making up most of the traffic. We were joined by Dick Forsman and together we had a good ID workshop, with most expected species observed. Three Little Swifts were nice to see migrating among the raptors.

In the afternnon I spent some time at North Beach, which was rather slow. We had several White-eyed Gulls fly west to roost, four Common Tern and one Caspian Tern showing well.