Midday and I'm back in the office when the phone bleeps with a mega alert from RBA. Rock Thrush Spurn - it had flown north so I sat and answered a few more emails. The next message had me packing up and making my excuses. 'The first twitchable one on the mainland for over 20 years' I told everyone before I slunk out the door. Before I'd even loaded the car Al Orton rang and said he'd meet me at the 'Bupa' on the M56.
Thirty minutes later we were heading east. With Al getting twitter updates every few minutes, except for a worryingly blank period of an hour, the journey sped by. A phone call informed us that our mates Groucho, Malc & Robbo were an hour behind us and we promised to keep them updated. We passed through Hull without incident and drove carefully along the lanes towards Easington being mindful of the local police record of setting speed traps when there's a twitch on at Spurn. Sure enough there were at least two being set up as we went through.
Arriving in good time we pulled up in the Bluebell car park and straight out the car and onto the bird courtesy of John Pegdens 'scope - neither of us had time to pick ours up from our respective homes. Still, I had the camera.....................................
The bird showed well flying down from the fence line to pick up invertebrates in the grass but was always quite distant.
Another lifer and a grip back I'd been waiting for since the last twitchable bird on the mainland in 1995 - a male bird that graced Hunstanton golf course for 5 days in May. Another one of those birds that I'd had on my list of 'must see, drop everything and go for'. The old life list is creeping up towarss the magic 500 BOU and may be a bit closer if the current review of category D species resuts in any being accepted as category A. Falcated Teal, Marbled Teal or White-headed Duck anyone?
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