Tales From An Essex Birder

After visiting Spurn for Migfest 2019, I fell in love with the place. Seeing a Barred Warbler in the hand, as well as Marsh Warbler, White-rumped Sandpiper and my first ever Skuas provided a magical weekend - one that has been documented in the archives of this blog. Fast forward 2 years; a global pandemic has prevented me from returning to this wonderful place. The understandable cancellation of the festival in 2020 was heartbreaking to me and meant that I had to wait yet another year to return to the place. But after seeing another years worth of mouth-watering sightings coming from Spurn, the time eventually came around for my second ever Migfest. Having managed to buy my weekend ticket prior to them selling out, I made the decision to do the long drive myself. So after a 5 hour drive in which I saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker , a Red Kite and even managed to year tick a Grey Partridge , I arrived at Spurn and began setting up my tent... Day 1 - 10/09/2021 After setting up the tent,...

 As August begins to draw to a close, the migrant season usually begins to hot up. With the multiple sightings of migrants such as Pied Flycatcher and Whinchat etc as well as scarcer migrants such as Wrynecks being reported in the past few weeks - this has certainly been the case. In fact, it was the latter species that I set my targets on when me and my Dad set off to Kent on a brisk, late August, post-birthday birding session. Having only had a brief glimpse of a Wryneck once before in August last year at Porthgwarra, the aim was to get my first good views of the species. With this in mind, we set off towards Abbott's Cliff (where two Wrynecks had been reported for the last few days). Before venturing along the cliff, we stopped for a sandwich at a beautiful, picturesque cafe which overlooked the cliffs and the misty sea. After fuelling up with a Tuna Mayo sandwich (controversial I know) we headed out towards the location. Having never been to the site before, I was unsure of wha...