Pacific Diver
Fast forward to today and I joined up with Brendon Fagan, Steve Blake and Ricky Flesher on a trip up to Northumberland. Despite somehow coming off the M1 and ending up driving around Leeds we made good time and arrived at Druridge Bay CP and was amazed to find the car parking was free! The first good bird of the day were a couple of Tree Sparrows by the car park followed by a RB Merganser on the main lake. After getting our bearings we walked down to East Chevington pool where a quick scan produced 2 male Scaup and some more Mergansers. We entered the hide and soon found out it was one of the crappest hides we'd ever been in. The openings were so low down than you broke your back stooping down to view out of them but if you sat on the benches the openings were too high to view out of using a scope! Despite this we eventually came across our desired bird. The juvenile Pacific Diver swam out in front of us allowing us to take in all its subtle features and thus allowing the other 3 to claim their lifer. This bird is roughly about the 8th for the UK and one of 3 currently in the country. The other notable bird seen was a winter plumage Slavonian Grebe.
After getting some info from one of the locals we then headed further south down to the beach where the first bird we came across was a male Reed Bunting! While waiting for our target birds to arrive we scanned the sea and found 11 Red-Throated Diver. Suddenly I heard a finchy type call a sure enough in came around 40 Twite which showed down to a few feet at times. They were soon joined by our other target when 7 Shorelark flew in for a few minutes.
On our way home we made a detour to Skinningrove in Cleveland where quickly we had decent views of the long staying Eastern Black Redstart which I'd seen back in December.
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