After a few years away it was nice to get back to a Spurn Migfest, seeing faces I had not encountered for some time and enjoying some pleasant birding. I had a few duties to attend to throughout the weekend, working as a Migfest volunteer, as well as doing a short pitch on Soil Hill as part of an ‘inland viz-mig patch-off’ against several other inland patches, a patch-off that I eventually won as decided by the attending audience.
Friday I did no birding,
instead catching up with people before spending the evening in the pub. On Saturday
morning, with no duties assigned to me, I headed to Hodgesons Field to check
the bushes away from the crowds. There were a few common species of interest,
Lesser Whitethroat, Cettis Warbler and a Wheatear, but nothing rare. A steady
stream of Meadow Pipits was heading south throughout the morning, contributing
to the 6000+ total achieved by the watchers at Spurn.
This count was
exceeded again the following morning with over 8000 Meadow Pipits heading
south. Being on car-parking duty I got to watch many of the birds flying over,
as well as the first skein of Pink-footed Geese of the autumn, 41 flying south
over the event field. Shortly after my parking management finished news broke
of a juvenile Red-necked Phalarope at Chalkies Point, so I raced around to see
it. The bird was showing phenomenally well on the Humber right in front of the
masses of observers, but sadly I did not get to spend too long with it before
it decided to become more active, and had soon made its way up the Humber. A Black Redstart was also in the same area!
Mid-afternoon I
headed off, ahead of the forecasted storms, rounding off an excellent and very
enjoyable MigFest 2025.
Whooo that's a beauty !
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