Ringed-necked Duck Wheldrake - and other local birds

On Friday when I sat down to have dinner I got a message saying that there was an eclipse drake Ring-necked Duck briefly at Wheldrake Ings, but that it had unfortunately flown off north. Hopefully it will stay in the area and get re found in the coming days. We've had a lot of rain over the last few days so there is likely to be some local flooding which could prove interesting. There was also a Turnstone at Wheldrake too. Will have to keep my eyes open!


Eclipse male Ring-necked Duck (Photographed in Canaries in 2003).

I have been checking out a couple of fields and hedges to the south of the village over the last week in the hope of connecting with some migrants, eg Wood Warbler, Pied Flycatcher, Redstart or Whinchat etc. (or something better!), however as yet I've been unsuccessful in finding any of the above though I have had 3 Tree Pipit go south, along with a number of Swallow and a couple of Swift. A decent number of Meadow Pipit are starting to build up in one of the fields with a flock of Linnet and Goldfinch keeping them company. A bit of good hedge has held Sedge Warbler, Willow Warbler, Common and Lesser Whitethroat and Chiffchaff with some of these considered to be migrants.

The gull numbers have been building up recently with birds flying over the house at dawn and dusk going to and from the River Humber. The majority of them appear to be Lesser Black-backed with the odd Common and Black-headed Gull thrown into the mix too. Yesterday while walking the dogs to the south of the village I was a little annoyed as someone ahead of me managed to flush a field full of gulls (c200+) before I could get there with my bins to take a look at them. Today however I fared much better and managed to get right up on them (even with the two dogs!). There was c.235 Lesser Black-backed Gull, 15 Common Gull and 2 Black-headed Gull but the highlight was two adult, and 1 juvenile Yellow-legged Gull that were in amongst all the Lesser Black-backs. I'll have to keep an eye open for them flying over the house as YLGull would be a pretty cool garden bird!

Speaking of Garden birds, on Friday morning I had a female/1st winter type Bullfinch in the garden. I heard the familiar call and then thought, I don't remember seeing/hearing Bullfinch previously from the garden, a quick check of my list reveled I was correct, it was indeed a new garden tick, number 82.