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Heslington York

written by: Steve Farley
I was working and my Birdguides app was pinging and pinging and pinging. Without looking I had no choice but to silence the phone. I was installing some signs at another nature reserve just over the border in Wales. It can be very frustrating, especially on a bank holiday when your app pings and a bird you really want to see, often a real rarity but you just can't get there.
We were joined by four students, young people with a real passion for wildlife, even in this horrendous weather they were positive, I soon knocked that out of them.
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This particular bird was one I have seen before but in Spain and a real beauty for me. Their usual breeding grounds are Africa and Eurasia, they often form large noisy groups in fact very noisy especially when alarmed by predators or humans. These three were in York, near the university in Heslington, literally a few hundred metres from my daughters home.

I have seen many images of this bird basking in the sunshine, but for me there was to be no sun. As we were walking towards the bird hide which is quite a way from the birds we realised that a fence that had been put there some time ago, was still there. And the rain was getting much much heavier. My little warm but definitely not waterproof coat was breached in nanoseconds and water was getting into, well everywhere!

If you watch the video below you will be able to see the rain bouncing at least two feet of the water (I'm not prone to exaggeration) and this rain was going up my trouser legs! We were joined by four students, young people with a real passion for wildlife, even in this horrendous weather they were positive, I soon knocked that out of them hahaha.
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Black Winged Stilt.

Three Black Winged Stilt, this really is a beautiful striking bird. Latin Name Himantopus Himantopus, how cool is that.

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Flamborough

Filed in: Flamborough written by: Steve Farley Flamborough Birding

Birding Flamborough

We were lucky enough to be staying in Flamborough over the bank holiday weekend at the end of April. This in turn meant that when all the crowds had gone we had the cliff-tops to ourselves. I’m not being selfish, Flamborough's North landing can get pretty crowded.

The film below was all shot later in the day when activity amongst the colony is high with most of the birds either feeding or collecting nest material. There is something about North Landing, especially the very quiet area behind the cafe. This, for me is the most stunning part of this area and very few people go there.

Bridlington

Purple Sandpiper
Now for me this really is a very special bird. For many years I have been aware of a small flock of this very hardy bird. Often they hang around with the much bigger and equally robust turnstones. And Turnstones do just that! They turn stones over looking for food, small crustaceans.

The film below was taken early evening in the lower part of Bridlington old harbour. It shows the Turnstones in the foreground and the smaller Purple Sandpipers in the background. Also below is the sound recording of individual Purple Sandpipers.

The Turnstones are the larger more mottled birds and the Purple Sandpipers are smaller with a grey head. The name comes from the fact they are from the species Sandpiper but also they have a Purple colouring as adult birds in good light.

Sound of Purple Sandpiper

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Above: Some of the many thousands of Gannets returning in the evening.
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Above: Northern Fulmar.
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Above: Kittiwake collecting mud and grass as nesting material.

Tags: Northern Pintail,Purple Sandpiper

It's a Night Heron

Filed in: Ossett written by: Steve Farley
I use an alert system which is countrywide to alert me to birds that are locally or nationally scarce or rare. If they are very rare, they are called Mega's. For these birds below, there was and still is at the time of writing this a pair in Ossett West Yorkshire. This is nothing short of a miracle.
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The Species is Nycticorax (Latin Name) the bird looks a little grey but is in fact very white with slightly skin tone ish legs. It was fascinating to watch it feeding.

It's a Megga

Ossett, West Yorkshire is not the place you would expect a pair of Black Crowned Night Heron to turn up in the middle of the night.

Birds, even very rare ones can turn up just about anywhere. This pair can't be fussy as they have made a temporary home among all the plastic rubbish and detritus on the river Calder. This was the first time iv'e been to this part of the river and I found it strangely beautiful. You can't help but notice the rubbish though, many tons of it on both banks. To see the bird was a quarter of a mile walk and a climb over a water tank trailer someone has deliberately put in the way of the path. This is presumably to deter walkers, how strange.

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Tags: Night Heron

Wykeham Forest

Crossbill
Crossbill can be really hard to find! Famous last words, Some years none and others quite plentiful, North Yorkshire, especially Wykeham Forest can be a bit of a hot spot.
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It's a Sunday morning in February. Some photographers have been posting images of Crossbill in both North Yorkshire and Middleton in Teesdale, a good sign you may think, but dead certs are rarely that in the birding world. We went to Wykeham Forest raptor watchpoint and although we could hear crossbill it was some hours before we got a view, plenty of Buzzard and Goshawk though, too distant to photograph,
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After a couple of hours we decided to leave the car and walk through the forest towards another viewpoint deep in the forest. As we approach the well-known car park, we could hear crossbills chattering above us. After a few minutes we got our eye in and started to see well camouflaged birds above our heads, very high in the trees. Don't judge the photograph too harshly, I was having a bad day with the camera.
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Crossbill are really well camouflaged among the pinecones and Pine needle branches. As I explained above, sometimes they are much easier to identify by sound.
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I spent most of last year rebuilding my business, making sure we stayed afloat and ensuring everyone's future was safe. This impacted greatly on my birding activity. I make no apologies for this, I did what I had to do, I do hope you missed me!
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Made by Steve Farley