28-9-13

This weekend me and a birding colleague were heading up to the east coast, the main reason is because we had a couple of seats booked on the skua/shearwater cruise out of Bridlington.  Another bonus was that I was meant to have been working on Saturday however this was cancelled, all that matters was when could my mate get a pass out for the weekend from his newly married missus, Friday night I got the answer, 07.00 Saturday morning, get in there.
A couple of hours driving and we were at our first stop, Blacktoft Sands RSPB.  This weekend was for chasing birds rather than staying in one place and the first destination was for one bird, a Pectoral Sandpiper.  Two hides into the visit and it was ticked off.  There was also Bearded Tits pinging away, Ruff, Dunlin, Greenshank, Spotted Redshank and a nice bonus in a flock (not sure of the technical term) of Pink-footed Geese flew low over as we were leaving.
Next stop, Spurn.  Midweek had seen a mass arrival of yellow-browed warblers along the east coast with many still seen Friday, we had to get one today.  Also the odd Red-breasted Flycatcher was being found, a real nice bonus and a life for my mate, but we had to find one first.  Approaching Kilnsea and the pager came alive, Yellow-browed Warbler at Easington, less than half a mile in the other direction.  Off we went.  A quick search and the briefest of views of Yellow-browed Warbler were had, not brilliant but I was enough, now Spurn. 
Arriving at Spurn we decided to head for the Warren near the tip of the point to look for any grounded migrants and as we paid to get along the point there was a bit of commotion by a bush.  We joined the birders and one had picked out another Yellow-browed Warbler.  We gave it 30 minutes but there was no sign, only of Richard from localbirdingforlocalpeople.blogspot.com ad Paul from birding4fun.blogspot.com who were also enjoying the delights of the east coast, so we headed off to the point.  This was a pretty pathetic visit with a grand total of 11 Redwings, 1 Sparrowhawk and a couple of Great Tits seen.  Working our way up the point we stopped off at a hide but not a lot was gathered. Last visit at Spurn would be the canal scrape where we managed to nail the Little Stint and struggled to photograph it because of the photo-bombing sheep.
With the day getting on and the need to book in to the B&B we headed north and decided to take a look at Hornsea, this was after we managed to find it.  We turned down several roads which all seemed to lead to the same place until we found the right one.  A nice big mere but we didn't have much time as we were kicked out after about 40 minutes but there was four very showy Dunlin which were kind enough to have several hundred photos taken.
With time getting on we headed for Bridlington and the B&B.