Wykeham and Bempton

Well after a busy week at work finishing nights on Saturday morning and a heavy session on the ale we had planned earlier in the week to have a days birding on the East Coast so i woke at 04:30 on Sunday made my flask and Stu picked me up at 05:10 and we set off to meet Ry and Paddy at a place near Howden to look for Quail. We pulled up at 06:00 and walked to where we needed to be and to wait for Ryan and Paddy to arrive.

After 5 minutes they turned up and we all started scanning and listening to see if we could hear or see any Quail. We saw a couple of Snipe drumming a Curlew Hobby and Red Kite but no Quail we waited and waited but no nothing as time was approaching 07:00 we decided to carry on to Wykeham Forest to look for Honey Buzzard. After i handed over the Sausage and Bacon sandwiches i had cooked for the boys we were off again.

We got to Wykeham just before 08:00 and got out our bins and scopes and set off on the short walk to the Raptor Viewpoint. When we got there there was a chap sat on one of the benches we sat on the end bench and set up our scopes and started to scan. Its a very nice spot to sit and scan over the valley looking for birds of prey and the fir trees infront of us were good for birds as some Crossbill flew over calling and a male bird sat in the top of one of the trees for a short amount of time but was lovely to see never the less a few siskin flew over calling too and we were scanning over the horizon when Paddy called out Goshawk we all got the directions from him and got on the bird we all agreed that it looked like a female as was big and brown in colour we watched the bird chasing the pigeons over the farm in the distance. There was a few corvids flying through as well Rooks Carrion Crows Jackdaws and also a couple of Ravens. There was a few Buzzards circling on the thermals all were Common Buzzards with no sign of the Honey Buzzard.

Our View

We carried on scanning over the trees and saw the Common Buzzards 4 we had in total 3 in the air at 1 time and then Ryan shouted Osprey i was like where and he said its infront of us and sure enough this Osprey was floating past us wow what a great view and so unexpected and we talked about how it just appeared from no where so we think it just was low in the valley and then gained height but what a great bird to see.

More people started to arrive and there were Common Buzzards circling and the Goshawk showed again and 2 more Ravens flew through and then a small party of about 20 Crossbills flew over which was nice to see but still no Honey Buzzard the time was getting on and it was just past 12pm so we decided to give it 30 more minutes as we were getting hungry and we were losing hope of seeing the Honey Buzzard so when the time got to 12:35 we decided it was time for lunch so we walked back to the car and had our food.

Paddy and Ryan had to get back home soon so after lunch we said our farewells and they headed home and me and Stu decided we would go to Bempton Cliffs as i needed Puffin for the year and Tree Sparrow.

After the 40 minute drive from Wykeham we pulled into the car park at Bempton which was pretty busy probably cos it was the weekend and the families were having there day out. We walked the short distance down the path to the cliffs and Stu said that he had Puffin from this place a couple of weeks previous when he had come with his family. After listening to this lady try to tell her son where the Puffin was i managed to get on to it fairly quickly which was a bonus and the Razorbills and Kittiwakes were showing well.

Kittiwake

After about 5 minutes we decided to go back towards the car to look for the Tree Sparrows which breed in the Car park on the way back there there was a Tree Sparrow on the visitors centre roof boom the 2nd of my ticks we then discussed heading to Bridlington to look for Turnstone which Stuart needed for his year list.

Razorbill

On the way to Brid the heavens opened so we pulled into the harbour but the tide was in and the rain was lashing down so we had to call it a day and head off home. It had been a brilliant day with great company disappointed we didnt see the Honey Buzzard but it wasnt reported at all that day but happy to get Osprey Crossbill amongst others.

All my pictures i use are Phonescoped using my Samsung s24 and a Phonescope adapter which fits over the eye of my Telescope which is a Kowa TSN 774 Prominar with a fixed x30 eyepiece there are lots of people that do this and Ryan who is in our group is a brilliant phonescoper and his pictures are far more better than mine but i enjoy it and am learning all the time there are plenty of videos on youtube on how to do this which are very helpfull and informative.

I hope you like my blog and please leave me a comment if you do or if you think i can improve it in anyway .

Happy Birding and stay safe

Justin