Welcome To My Blog,This Will Be Mainly Used As A Diary For My Local Birding Patch At East Halton/Goxhill On The Banks Of The Humber Estuary,With Occasional Twitching And Visits Elsewhere Including Photos From Mine & Tracey's Walks Around Our Beautiful Countryside.
A trip up to North Yorkshire today to complete a new walk from Goathland up to Grosmont and back in a loop, saw us having a cracking time.
The walk takes in some lovely scenery and includes two waterfalls, Mallyan Spout and Thomasson Foss, the latter we didn't visit and follows part of the old train line between Beck Hole and Whitby.
You can still catch a train running between Pickering and Whitby, ran by the North Yorkshire Moors railway, a heritage line ran by enthusiasts.
During our walk we managed to see some nice birds also, which included 2 Dippers, a pair of Grey Wagtail, but the best of the bunch was a gorgeous male Pied Flycatcher near Beck Hole.
Some nice insects seen included my first Speckled Wood of the year near Grosmont.
There were some lovely Wildflowers on the walk also which included Toothwort, Green Alkanet, Ramsons, Wood forget me Not and Greater Celandine to name but a few.
We took loads of photos as could be expected and the following are my favourites from our day.
A decent afternoon forecast albeit it being a bit windy, saw Tracey and myself heading south through the Lincolnshire Wolds to that gem of a reserve Frampton Marsh RSPB.
The main reason for travelling down was to see the reported adult Bonaparte's Gull which had taken up residence on Reedbed Lake, and was a new species for Tracey and only a second sighting for myself and also a new bird for my Lincolnshire list.
After a pretty decent drive considering it was a Saturday afternoon, we arrived at a packed car park.
We got our gear together and it was great to see the Lesser Yellowlegs still here and showing really well as always near to the car park, this bird was first found in autumn 2023 and has spent the winter here, new bird number one for Tracey.
On to Reedbed Lake and a small crowd were present and it wasn't long before we were enjoying some superb views of the star Yank as it fed on flies picked from the surface of the water in company of a handful of Black-headed Gulls for a useful comparison.
The size difference was apparent, being in between Black-headed and Little Gulls and the head colour was more reminiscent of Sabine's Gull, with a charcoal-bluey black shade to it, much more different to the chocolate brown of the Black-heads.
After taking some pleasing video of the star bird, i attempted to take some video in flight of the 1st summer Little Gull and lovely Black Tern which were also present over Reedbed, but it was a real challenge in the gusty south westerly wind.
After enjoying all the nice birds on Reedbed we made our way around to North Scrape and enjoyed some great views of the 1st summer female Black-winged Stilt which was watched feeding in the shallows, at times battling with the wind. It made me wonder if this is one of the returning chicks from the previous years breeding success here, when two pairs bred.
Now Tracey had seen 5 new birds, but more was to come.
We had heard that a Red-breasted Goose had been seen from the floodbank earlier in the day, but luckily as we wandered back towards the visitor centre it was feeding out on the wet grassland, talk about jammy!.
We watched as this smart goose fed with it's Dark-bellied Brent cousins and gave some cracking views, what a smart bird.
This lovely Goose species breeds in arctic Siberia and mostly winters around the Black sea coasts in Bulgaria, Romania and the Ukraine areas so is a long way from home.
Well what an amazing visit, seeing birds from all points of the compass and it really does go to show what an incredible reserve this is and what a real pleasure it is to visit.
A planned day out today to lovely Derbyshire again, saw us visiting a new place, the stately home of Bess of Hardwick, Hardwick Hall and later in the day one of our favourite places nearby, Bakewell.
We arrived at Hardwick Hall, just as the gates were opening and decided brekkie first and a cuppa in the cafe, before investigating the grounds, Old Hall and gardens and then looking around this grand house.
As mentioned above this was built by 'Bess of Hardwick' or Elizabeth Hardwick as she was born and became one of the richest woman in the land in her time second only to Queen Elizabeth the first. One of her marriages was marrying Sir William Cavendish and was responsible for the building of the amazing Chatsworth house.
She was an accomplished needlewoman and she collected some fine tapestries, which can be seen to this day, one of the finest collections in the world.
After enjoying our visit to this amazing house with it's fine history, we travelled over to Bakewell for some lunch and a wander around this lovely Peak District town.
The following photos are my favourites from our day, all taken with my new Google Pixel 8 Pro phone.
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