Siberian Stonechat at Scalby Mills

Today we set of to go to Flamborough which was about an hours journey but the main road to go to Flamborough was closed so then that added a lot more time onto our journey. The weather looked good at Flamborough so that was great!

On the way there we stopped of at a Little Nature Reserve were they had some feeders. My Dad had previously seen Nuthatches and Jays on them so we decided to wait for about half an hour to see if anything turned up. The only birds which turned up were Chaffinches, Blue Tits and eventually a Siskin. Afterwards we continued our journey on to Flamborough.

As we were about 2mins away me and my Dad noticed lots of cars parked at the side of the road. We pulled up to see what was going on, we saw lots of birders walking through a wood with scopes and cameras so we decided to ask a birder what have they been looking at and one man replied 'Little Bunting' and then we asked is it still there and then the man said 'yes it is showing well'. So we finally got to the spot to were it was but it wasn't there we had just missed it by about 2mins. We waited for about 45mins to see if it returned but no luck. But while we were waiting we did see a flock of Redwing, a Sparrow Hawk and a Kestrel. As we were walking back this birder started talking to us about our gear and his gear and bits similar to that and right at the end of the wood he said 'have you been to see the Siberian Stonechat at Scalby Mills yet?' we said 'no' and then he said 'you should defiantly go and see it before the light goes it is showing very well' so then we said 'thanks we will go'.

It was about a 30min Journey from Flamborough but we eventually found the spot. We started walking up the hill to get to the bit it was sighted at. On the way lots of birders were walking back and they said to us 'it is still showing nicely at the top of bush about half way down'. So we started walking down but when we reached the bit there was no sign of it, we thought we could hear it calling but we couldn't find it. Just as about we were going to give up hope my Dad spotted it at the top of a bush about 4 metres away from were we were standing! The light was just good enough to get a few decent shots plus it didn't seem bothered we were even there!

Siberian Stonechat