Roller Coaster!

A superb Roller has been present on the East coast, 20 miles north of Spurn in a small village called Aldbrough for the past 3 days. With it being such a fantastic bird to see and not one to miss, myself and Phil Owen started very early indeed in order to get to the site for dawn. After the three hour journey from North Wales, we arrived to see a sihouette of a bird high up on a telegraph pole. The Roller! Ticked at 4.30am! Now, he just needed to wait for sunrise to appreciate the bird in colour!

Soon after, we were blessed with brilliant and close views of the Roller, whereby it was favouring a nearby post. It seemed to be feeding up well on invertibrates and spent quite a bit of time on the ground. Rollers are day migrants which was why we wanted to make the journey so early, but we needn't have worried as the bird was present for the whole day. We also were given great views of Barn Owl as it gracefully flew past and over the Roller.

Once more than satisfied with the views and photo opportunities, we moved on for the Icterine warbler present at Flambrough Head. Dispite a good search, we wern't able to catch up with the bird but managed amazing close views of Gannets, Puffins, Guillemots (including a briddled race), Razorbills, Fulmars and Kittiwakes as they darted and sat on the sea beneath us.

Puffins on the water

Next stop, was Blacktoft sands where a Marsh Warbler was making its stay. The bird has been present a few days and was ringed. It gave a frequent few blasts, deep within the reed bed and finally showed on and off within the small trees at the back. It was another British tick for me! At the ste, we also managed Peregrine Falcon, Short Eared Owl, Cuckoo, Reed Bunting, Sedge and Reed Warbler.

Blacktoft Sands

On our way back, we thought we'd try out luck with the long-staying Red Necked Grebe on a lake at Hatfield Moors. Well, the less said about this little blighter, the better. We understood that the bird was on '10 acre lake'... yeah, we should have paid more attention to the name of this lake and what stood before. After an extremely long walk past a few lakes, our patience was starting to run out, a 50 minute walk had found us at the lake. We scanned across the lake but then noticed that the lake kept going around a blind corner, of which this was inevitably where the grebe was (well over a mile in distance). We gave up and tried to enjoy our long walk back!

On the whole, an enjoyable day with two super birds! Thanks to Phil, for the great company and here's to more sucessful twitches!