Brown Booby
Back in September 2019 I managed to dip the UK’s 2nd Brown Booby near St.Ives,Cornwall on the 1st then on the 7th I managed to dip the UK’s 3rd Brown Booby on The Lizard,Cornwall and I thought I’d missed the chance of seeing one. But fast forward to this Summer and the warm temperatures of the sea had delivered 2-3 more to our shores including one that amazingly shared the Bishop Rock lighthouse with its Red-footed cousin for a day!
One of these birds had been seen off of Flamborough Head then numerous sites along the coast. Thankfully it decided that the numerous buoys just off of South Gare,Cleveland was a nice place to hang out and so on Saturday 9th I was up at midnight and on the road at 1am. Unfortunately before I’d reached junction 13 of the M1 I hit something on the road and it caused my car to start squealing like a pig from one or more of my wheels. I turned around and climbed back into bed just before 2am as I didn’t want to risk something happening on the 8 hour round trip!
My lovely wife said I could borrow her car and so along with Matt and George Moreton (who’d both dipped the Lizard bird with me) we left my house at 1am and headed north. We arrived at South Gare and parked up in between the numerous camper vans as somehow it was a favourite part of the country to go camping. Despite it still being dark we got out the car and got ourselves set up. Around 6am I managed to pick out a booby shaped bird on top of one of the green buoys and as it slowly got lighter the three of us were able to finally grip back and tick BROWN BOOBY! The bird an adult female is roughly the 12th for the UK and despite staying for over an hour it never moved from its spot.
Happy with our views we headed over to Saltholme RSPB where after a few minutes I re-found the juvenile a Buff-breasted Sandpiper as it flew through my scope view. Sadly it was a tad to distant to get any kind of decent photo as you can tell below! It was another tick for Matt, a second for George and my 8th!
Buff-breasted Sandpiper
A single Curlew Sandpiper was also noted which was a nice year tick. We did miss both Temminck’s and Pectoral Sandpipers which was a shame. We arrived home just after 11.30am and I sat down with a much needed cup of tea knowing that I’d seen 2 species of Booby in the UK in 21 days!
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