Ellis' Birding Blog: Surprise at Sunny Scarborough

Today our plan was to go to Hunmanby to look for the Velvet Scoters which have been present for a while there now and then afterwards we would go to Scarborough to look for the Juvenile Great Northern Diver which has been present in the Harbour.

When we opened our front door to get into the car I spotted 3 Thrushes at the top of our Rowan Tree. I then noticed that they were Redwing! This is the first time we have ever noticed Redwing on it so this was a very nice surprise for us. They occasionally flew to the top of some other trees to sit with a small flock of Starlings.

Redwing and Starlings

When we arrived at Hunmanby we found the spot that were the Velvet Scoters had been sighted. We asked a man to see if he could see them but he replied "no". While we were waiting we picked out a group of about 50 Common Scoter! They were quite far away but we still enjoyed watching them. Also we got about 3 Red Throated Divers flying across the sea. We waited for about half an hour to see if the Velvet Scoters came into view but they didn't so we then decided to head of to Scarborough in search of the Great Northern Diver.

When we arrived at Scarborough we had a walk around the harbour were we found about 3 Guillemot in the harbour. We watched them for a while until they went further away. When we were walking up some steps we noticed 2 small waders picking up pieces of food around peoples feet! They turned out to be some extremely tame Turnstone! They came within one foot of us! We could have watched these very entertaining birds for ages but the light was going so carried on our search for the Great Northern Diver.

Turnstone

While we were walking around we noticed people with Cameras and Binoculars just a little walk ahead of us. When we got there we straight away spotted the stunning Great Northern Diver! It was accompanied by a Shag and a Cormorant. It was showing very well at times but after about 10mins it went to another part of the harbour were it became much further away. We went to different parts of the harbour trying to find in again. We eventually found it right at the end of the harbour were it showed much better than before, at a few points it came within a few feet! It was absolutely amazing to get so close to such an amazing bird!