There's a sense of déjà vu to this weeks sightings with our stop press highlight from last week being the same this week..... well species wise at least.
After the elusive juvenile white-rumped sandpiper of last week, the same bird (which has been around since the 14th of October at least) proved equally hard to pin down in the north of the county (at Alkborough and then into neighbouring East Yorkshire at Blacktoft) on the 9th, we thought that was it for scarce waders and we would finish on an unfortunately brief yankee peep. Fortunately a visit to the 360 hide on Tuesday to check on foraging snow buntings resulted in a welcome second bite at the cherry when an adult was found feeding on the fringes of South Scrape. Experience won out over youthful naivety and knowing it was onto a good thing being here did the decent thing and decided to stick around and is still present at time or writing. Obviously being older makes you wiser and it's decision to hang around will not only do it good but also all our visitors who missed out first time around.
White-rumped sandpiper - Toby Collett
Unfortunately the appearance of this North American wader results in the snow buntings I'd originally gone out to see being relegated to second place in the weeks highlight reel. A flock of 20 were seen on the morning of the 12th, working their way around the scrapes. The following morning 17 were on the reedbed where they could be watched comfortably, occasionally with a sanderling for company. A marauding sparrowhawk must have had it's eye in as it was seen to scatter the group and only 16 were seen on the 14th.
Snow buntings - Ian Ellis
After the flurry of whooper swan records from previous weeks we drew a blank this week but one visitor was rewarded with 5 Bewick's swans heading past Cut End on Saturday, where slavonian grebe, peregrine, goldeneye and green woodpecker were also seen. Several skeins of pink-footed geese have also been recorded heading over though none of them beat the total of over a thousand feeding in the fields to the south of the reserve on the 8th, 9th and 10th. Several pale-bellied brent geese have been picked out among the more numerous dark bellied brents and surely it's only a matter of time before a black brant turns up among them.
As promised last week here are the BTO WeBS count totals from the 9th which maybe weren't as high as expected due to the highest tides being mid week. Teal came in top with 1166 and in descending order with have 720 dark-bellied brent goose, 198 wigeon (amazingly low as we counted over 2,000 later this week), 87 mallard, 50 shoveler, 22 gadwall and 11 pintail. Just shows how much things can change on a tide as I had over 30 pintail this afternoon. The only other widlfowl of note was a female goosander on the 11th.
While no hen harrier were seen this week we did have a pick up in merlin sightings with daily observations over the saltmarsh along with peregrine and marsh harrier.
We'll finish where we started with a wader round up and although not heading the bill, a notable mention must go to the wood sandpiper that was still present on the 10th making it the latest record in the whole country this year!! The scrapes also held singles of spotted redshank and turnstone, a little stint pair and some very confiding, on occasion, jack snipe.
Jack snipe - Neil Smith
The more you're out the more you see - https://twitter.com/BoyWonderBirder