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Hillam Rooks!

Good morning everyone, yesterday evening the device pole was removed and I am hoping never to return. No more loud bangs and no more disturbance to our wildlife, Horses. Children and pets. Not necessarily in that order.

I hope we have a resolution and I do not know if the environmental officer has been around, I really hope so. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody that reads this for their support.
A little bit of Science!
Just for clarity we will call it a Rookery. The Rookery is at the side of my house at the end of Hillam Hall View and contained about 55 birds at its largest count. At the peak of the breeding season this is 9 nests at the very top of some very very tall trees. Every morning the Rooks leave to go to their feeding grounds in the stubble fields surrounding Hillam and Burton Salmon.

I know that our Rooks go East and usually feed in fields surrounding the pumping station in Hillam, so not very far away. However before they go other groups of Rooks will sometimes join them and swell the numbers and this can look like a murmuration and lasts three minutes or so. They all then go off together and in my observations over the last twenty eight years rarely return as one big group. The 55 or so in our Rookery return as a group as they will have done for 10"s if not 100"s of years.

Rooks only make a noise in the breeding season.
In the film above you will clearly see several groups of Rooks getting acquainted before they go to their feeding grounds in the east of the village. They will murmurate just before they leave, this usually takes place in the breeding season and just after.

The fact is somewhere between forty and fifty five birds will return to this Rookery along with some Starlings and depending on the season other species too.

Hartepool, Salthome & Redcar Beach.

If you would like to see all the birds above then head to Hartlepool Headland. Parking near the Hartlepool Gun Battery which is a military museum head down towards the sea, 30 metres at the most then turn right in a South Easterly direction. This is a lovely prom and keep walking towards the old lighthouse and I guarantee you will see all the species above.

The hardest to see is the very well camouflaged Purple Sandpiper who hang out with gangs of Turnstone on the rocky foreshore as they forage for food. This really is a great place to see birds, as you walk you often have good numbers of seabirds flying in and out or just flying past. Then within a 100 metres you have a breakwater often with Cormorant and the occasional European Shag
Gulosus aristotelis and a tiny bit of beach sometimes with Sanderling and Purple Sandpiper. Keep walking through the children's play area and you come to a larger expanse of sandy outcrop that can hold anything so don't ignore.

Keep an eye on the "sheltered" sea here for Eider, Common Scoter, Velvet Scoter and anything else from Grebe to Divers.

Purple Sandpiper

The Purple Sandpiper (above)have the most northerly wintering range of any other wader. This small pot bellied bird is a very hardy bird, they can and do breed in the lowlands of Arctic Canada. You can often observe them constantly probing soft ground, lichen and sandy sores for food, they never seem to stop moving. They are often miss identified as Turnstones or Turnstone young. We are quite lucky in that we have some very reliable sites to see them like Hartlepool, Scarborough and the harbour walls in Bridlington.

Gulls, these are some of the most difficult birds to identify. This probable second year, probably a Herring Gull, Why am I not certain? Well, as I said above Gull especially young gulls are impossible. I'm drawn to these magnificent survivors, they just adapt to every situation. However, gulls are endangered! Never think there's millions of them, they really are struggling.

The Phil Stead hide at Saltholm really is a great hide, often full of very friendly people from Teesmouth Bird Club @teesbirds1 on "X" Club membership is £16 for the year and along with York Ornithalogical Club represents the very best in birding @yorkbirding.

From here I got immediate views of Great White, Cattle Egret (hiding in the reeds) and little Egret which was fabulous. Some pretty poor images below.

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Dalby Forest to Scarborough

It’s a very cold Saturday morning and I’m having my first coffee of the day. I’m waiting for my birding partner Phil to make his way over from Ossett. We have been hearing of large numbers of birds in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire, including yellowhammers, and Siskin.
I really like Dalby Forest and it is part of the National forests run by Forestry England and paid for by our ultra high taxation system. However when you arrive, having paid once you get to pay nine pounds all over again for the privilege of using what you own and have already paid for. These large forests are also a business, selling and franchising the sale of wood, not bad, three bites of the cherry, not to mention all the cafés and other sales.

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It had been snowing for a couple of days in the North of England but all the roads were perfectly passable. Just through the automated money taking machine lovingly called cherry one, there is a car park called Haygate and a really nice view over the valley. Through a large gate is a beautiful walk that goes all the way back to cherry one. We could hear and eventually see Nuthatch and many other common woodland birds. I set up the camera but within minutes I was in a wave of the now ubiquitous dog screamers. One dog screamers dog must have been in Norway he was screaming so loudly at his well behaved dog that pretended to just ignore him.
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This large flock was mainly Coal Tit with some other mixed tits and a pair of bramblings. We could hear Nuthatch and Goldcrest above our heads and eventually the Nuthatch came down from the trees and showed well. We never really got a good view of the Goldcrest even though we could hear it all the time.
 
One of the highlights for me was hearing a Marsh Tit and we could see it traveling from a distant snow covered tree to the rear of another tree near to our position. Eventually our patience paid off and it came withing filming distance, a real treat.
 
And upon leaving the forest we found to our utter devastation that the pay barrier was not working and so the barrier was up to allow the tax burdened public to leave.
And on to Scarborough…
 
We had seen reports of great Northern Diver in the marina so we thought we would try. We parked the car and looked over the railings down into the marina and there it was, we had actually parked next to the bird. There was a very nice photographer who had been there for a couple of hours who explained that it keeps coming and going taking the underwater route they normally take. I’m really sorry if you are that photographer as I did not get your name or your Instagram name, please contact me if you read this, you did say you would!
 
 
As we were all photographing and filming a small group of inconsequential, misguided, delinquent, ugly, stupid and otherwise brainless youths came into the area for fishermen and let of some fireworks then ran away across the road giggling, Oh how we all laughed, I was beside myself.
 
None of this bothered the now “two Great Northern Divers” though and we got really great views of the birds for a good hour or so.

Harewood Church to Wheldrake

We had been told about the Harewood Church Hawfinches in the proceeding week. We had also seen a couple of Twitter posts, I refuse to call it X so we were hopeful have a positive outcome to our trip. We parked in the Muddy Boots Café on Church Lane in Harewood village, £2 a bargin! We walked down to the church and there was already two birders there, they explained they had seen them from a distance at the very tops of the trees. Most of my friends said it’s a wonder I didn’t just burst into flames in the churchyard, I’m so anti religious. I’m not anti religion, I’m anti people ramming their beliefs down your throat.
The Hawfinches were visible but from a distance, so no worthy photographs, I’ll try harder next time. I did meet another birder Dave Ward, who has a really great website www.dwardphotos.org.uk check it out! We chatted about the past and it was great to meet someone older than me (he’ll chuckle at that) great to meet you Dave.
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Deer were also very visible as you walked towards the church and very photographable also unphased by our presence but we were distant. On the way back to the car we saw Great Spotted Woodpecker, Jay, three joggers and a lot of dogwalkers letting their dogs crap and not pick it up. We had a coffee sat outside the Muddy Boots café; it was absolutely rammed inside. We immediately attracted Red Kites and we were treated to a fabulous arial display as they swooped down to see if I had left any scraps. Good luck with that one, I didn’t get this big leaving scraps.
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Thorganby Viewing Platform reported Smew
 
There was a report on @yorkbirding and the website of the same name, the best website in the whole world that covers York and the surrounding area.  A Smew, and I wanted to see it. When we got there it was already in the scope of Jane & Rob Chapman and as I could only see a white blob in my bins, I was very grateful. We were soon joined by other notable York birders, Jonno Leadley, Duncan Bye and Craig Rolson, good birds on your patch attract birders and me. It was good to talk, one guy, sorry I don’t know your name told us that he had just seen a couple of Waxwings in Wheldrake village. We did know they were there, but on our way through although we checked we did not see any. We were driving back in that direction so we could re check.
 
Wheldrake Village.
As we drove through we immediately spotted the Waxwing and one other viewer, a local with a passing interest in birds. The villagers were absolutely smashing as we hung around for over an hour and joined by a small but select group including Rob and Jane along with a few others and lots and lots of passers-by. Thank you to all who stopped for a chat and to find out a bit more about the enigmatic Waxwing.
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