Paul Matson's Birding Blog: Saturday 15th October

After a good sleep we were keen to get out early and this time avoid some of the crowds as potentially there would be more people around today than yesterday. We drove straight to Kilnsea with a plan of checking the trees and bushes around he churchyard. It was still obvious that there were lots of Thrushes in the area. The wind had dropped and moved to the South but the overcast skies delivered a wet start so the first hour of daylight we were quite damp and didn't see a huge amount, as gradually the rain eased we decided to walk out towards the Canal Scrape along the coastal path. Redwing, Fieldfare, Song Thrushes were everywhere and like yesterday we were still tripping over Robins, we also saw a couple of Woodcock flush from the path in front of us. We walked to the Spurn YWT building and a Black Redstart was on the short grass then 2 Short-Eared Owls flew in off the sea.

Without a clear plan we started to walk along he Spurn peninsula towards the breach. We had better views of a Short-Eared Owl hunting along the foreshore and a Wheatear was on the beach. Thrushes continued to fly past with several Meadow Pipits moving and a flock of 60 Pink-footed Geese. and later c45 White-fronted Geese.

2 Rock Pipits were in the breach area and 2 Lesser Redpolls were the other side. The breach was an area of pure sand about 500m long which had been created a couple of years ago during a Winter storm surge and washed away a road and at high tide the Spurn peninsula is turned into an island. We continued to walk towards the lighthouse under a brightening sky and it was great being out birding and enjoying the new habitat. We worked out that the next high tide was not until much later which would give us plenty of time to reach the point and walk back without the risk of spending the night stranded on the peninsula. In front of a Humber shore hide was a large finch flock which had c50+ Brambling, Chaffinch and Linnet.

The area known as the point was new to both of us and we were guided towards a Dusky Warbler in the scrub near the point which duly showed well after a brief wait. We also saw 27 Bearded Tits and plenty of Goldcrest a few Blackcap and a late Willow Warbler. We bumped into Colin watching a Redstart and he had just seen a Little Bunting, which unfortunately we didn't. We made time to have a look in the newly refurb'd lighthouse, although we were slightly miffed when we'd climbed the 120 stairs to find out that you weren't allowed outside on the rampart (health and safety reasons !) it had actually been really well restored and set up, although I imagine visitor numbers might be quite low given the only way to get here is a long walk .

By the time we had arrived back at the Spurn YWT buildings we had walked around 8.5 miles. Then news came through of a Raddes Warbler near the canal Scrape, we were delayed slightly talking to one of the Spurn wardens, found the crowd, but they had lost the warbler and it wasn't seen again. There was however good views of yet another Dusky Warbler, which as we were photographing news came through of a possible Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler only about 100m away. This really would have been a holy grail to end an already fantastic 2 days.

We arrived on the bank where a 'locustella' type warbler had been seen to fly and gone to ground in the thick grass near a seabuckthorn bush. Reinforcements were called and a mist net erected around 20m from the bush, by this time a crowd of nearly 100 people had gathered and were organised in a tight circle around the area the bird had been last seen. The military maneuver worked and the locustella wabler waited until it was nearly trodden on before vacating the cover and heading straight into the net. It turned out to be just a Grasshopper Warbler, but it raised he pulse for several minutes and was an exciting end to the day.