Tales From An Essex Birder

After what can only be deemed as a successful twitch the day prior, I was praying that I hadn't used up all my luck as today was the big one. Having ummed and arred about whether to go, I caved in and booked a £65 train ticket to Bempton Cliffs in the hope of seeing Albert - what can only be described as a bucket list bird. Having booked the ticket a week in advance, I had been keeping a keen eye out on news of the bird. Reports that it was only seen at 7:30 am the previous day and failing to return certainly had me nervous for the following day. Finally D-Day had come around and I arose at 5am to gather my things and head to Liverpool Lime Street bracing for the 4 and a half hours and 3 trains ahead. Well on the way to Bempton by now, the first reports of the morning were negative - which only served to increase my nervousness. Would all this time and money be for nothing? However, at around 10 am news came through that the bird was back at its faithful cliff by staple news viewpo...

It's been a solid 9 months since the last blog post and I can only apologise for inactivity - however it was a flurry of top birds that has given me back the bug for both twitching and blogging. Ever since dipping an American Robin earlier in the year (the less said about that the better) my luck has been in and I've had four successful twitches on the bounce - all of which I plan to document on here. 29/05/2022 The first of this series of birds rocked up on 29th May 2022. Having just finished my second year of uni, I found myself with some time on my hands for the first time in the while - which I planned to utilise by birding as much as possible. The day was intended to be a lazy one. I awoke with a lousy hangover due to some excess drinking the previous night - a standard procedure at uni - and I remained in bed until around midday. However, all was about to change when I received the update from Birdguides that the touring White-Tailed Lapwing had stopped off at Bickershaw...