Having spoken to my dad the previous afternoon and saying I'd come up and see him on the Sunday he told me not to bother due to Covid worries he'd prefer not to have anyone round which was fair enough. So with that news I gratefully accepted a lift up to Stiffkey with Matt, George and Kai. We arrived in the dark and rain along with a few other birders and realised the tide was still coming in and wouldn't be out far enough to walk out onto the saltmarsh to look for where the Scrub Robin roosted for over an hour so we decided to head into the campsite woods to try and see the Pallas's Warbler.
We'd got almost to the end and hadn't see any warblers and so feeling demoralized we contemplated heading over to Holme until the tide was out. Just then news broke that the robin had just been seen to fly in off the Saltmarsh and land near the car park. With this we broke into a run which in wellies wasn't easy but after 2 minutes I reverted to power walking! I reached the car park to find no one there but thankfully I could see everyone in the stubble field above the car park. I walked in and joined the others and after a minute or so I picked up the bird feeding in a game strip on the edge of the field. It then perched up in full view for just over a minute and RUFOUS BUSH CHAT was on my list. (I don't like the new name!)
From memory I've only visited Holme twice so when we arrived I wasn't entirely sure where to go so we just followed the crowd up to the edge of the golf course. 8 Little Egret were out on the marsh and flocks of winter thrushes passed overhead along with the odd lingering Swallow. 3 Brambling were seen and heard and surprisingly were a year tick but the star of the show took some finding but then did eventually show well. My 6th Red-flanked Bluetail perched up nicely and long enough for me to get some reasonable photos. This was a new bird for the other 3 so a 2 tick day for them.
A great morning out with a proper mega seen.
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