An afternoon at the seaside

photos taken with iPhone 4S

Flamborough Head

I've been on holiday in East Yorkshire for a week. We stayed in glamorous Flamborough, on the sticky-out bit halfway up on the right-hand side.

The birds were alright, though. There were tons of migrants early on - Goldcrests and Redwings were in every bush and every scrap of hedge - but they all cleared off by Wednesday. But not before we'd seen two Pallas's Warblers (Darren found one of them) and a Yellow-browed on Flamborough Head.

However, I won't dwell on our two failed attempts to see the Dusky Warbler at Scarborough, or the way things went really rather quiet after midweek.

There were other compensations, however... watching two Roe Deer jump a barbed wire fence; seeing the last Gannet chick of the year still sitting fluffily on the sheer cliff at Bempton; a skein of Pink-footed Geese arriving from over the sea; a handful of Ring Ouzels (including one picked up dead near the lighthouse); watching a Jack Snipe try to land in a gorse bush, a Redstart and a small flock of Bramblings in the hedge right outside our window.

Migrant Wheatear at North Landing

This first-winter male Redstart appeared in the hedge outside our luxury accommodation. The chalet, I mean

And this was the first Brambling I'd ringed!

Here's one Mark caught earlier... a Lesser Whitethroat, possibly of the central Asian race halimodendri

Here's the lighthouse

And the cobble beach at South Landing

Flowers on a bench at t'North

Thornwick Bay

Dawn

Revisited Forge Valley Woods, where I saw my first-ever Nuthatches 20 years ago!

Somehow, these jokes have raised a lot of money for charity...

Lovely decor in the chalet

You'd think they could at least spell YORKSHIRE correctly

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM or Canon Powershot A640