A quiet spell

The past few days have been pretty quiet at Long Nab. Seawatching has brought very limited rewards and discussion has once again turned to whether recent seawatches qualify amongst the quietest ever experienced here. The consensus seems to be that they likely qualify for the top ten... A Great Northern Diver close inshore south of the hut and three Pomarine Skuas moving north this morning is perhaps a sign of an improvement. One can only hope so, although it has to be said most of the action the morning involved counting Black-headed Gulls on the move south - grim stuff! Goldeneye, Common Scoter, Eider, Wigeon and Teal have all been noted, but in very small numbers. Whooper Swans have been breaking records at other sites along the Yorkshire coast over the past week or so. However, they are seemingly too cryptic for us as we have managed just one all autumn! Clearly we need to do better.

Visible migration of passerines has been similarly muted with a handful of finches south and a trickle of Fieldfares in off the sea being about the best of it. Steve Wignill noted a House Martin move south on 1st. The stubbles have been the most productive areas to work with up to 10 Snow Buntings and three Lapland Buntings present. A Twite joined the Linnet flock on 31st, the first of the autumn here, but appears to have quickly moved on.

The bushes yielded a single Blackcap on 1st November, with four Song Thrushes in Crook Ness perhaps indicative of newly arrived migrants. A Great Spotted Woodpecker at the same location is a scarce bird here, though one suspects it hasn't come far.

With the prospect of a change in wind direction to something a bit more favourable on Monday, we hope for better then.

View from the hut at dawn

Song Thrush at Crook Ness - a newly arrived migrant, or just desperately trying to find signs of hope?

Yep, things have got so quiet I have resorted to photographing Dunnocks!

A Sparrowhawk hunts over the ringing site

Another early morning view south towards Scarborough Castle