Bempton

Red-tailed shrike

Now that me and my new boots are properly acquainted I thought it was time we had an adventure. I've been wargaming the train timetables to Bempton for a couple of weeks and the arrival of a red-tailed shrike to join the albatross there provided the impetus to give it a go. As it happens it's not much trickier than getting to Millom, though at three times the cost. The key to the trick is timing my arrival at Oxford Road such that I don't end up waiting the best part of an hour at Piccadilly or Sheffield, or both. I had four minutes in which to buy a ticket for the fast train to Sheffield, which gave me fifteen minutes for buying the ticket to Bempton (it's about twenty pounds cheaper to do it this way, train fare structures are insane).

I got off at Bempton Station and it started pouring down. It was like this, on and off, for the next half hour. It was an overcast, muggy sort of day and the showers weren't remotely refreshing which made the walking a bit unpleasant. I walked through the village and on towards the RSPB reserve at Bempton Cliffs.

Yellowhammer

Once past the village the hedgerows were busy with sparrows — mostly house sparrows near the village, nearly all tree sparrows further out — goldfinches, whitethroats and yellowhammers. 

I turned off to go down the lane to Wandale Farm where the shrike had been reported. The hedgerows were fizzing with gatekeeper butterflies, whitethroats, yellowhammers and reed buntings. A curlew flew overhead, calling all the while, and a corn bunting sang from the other side of the field.

Red-tailed shrike

As I got to the beginning of the lane to the farm I bumped into a chap who was scanning the far end of the field by the road. He reckoned he'd just seen the shrike on the hedge. We both scanned round. I noticed a lot of linnets perched on the telegraph wires and another, larger bird, perched off to the left of them, starling-sized but very top-heavy. I was pretty sure it was the shrike but it was silhouetted against bright clouds so it was hard to be sure and impossible of the identification. "There's a public footpath to the cliffs over there," he said, "If we follow that we should get a closer look." We walked down, the shrike clocked us, it didn't give a monkey's and we got very close views — about thirty yards — from our side of the hedge. I've never seen a shrike that close before, they've always been on the other side of a field (hark at the expert! This is my fourth). We watched as it preened and caught flies from the wire, often just snapping them up as they went past. I took loads of photos, bracketing the exposure like mad to try and make sure they weren't all silhouettes and I'm still not happy with any of them. I forgot to ask the chap's name, but thank you sir whoever you are.

Red-tailed shrike

Red-tailed shrike

Red-tailed shrike

As to the shrike, well the first impression I got was that it was very like the red-bscked shrike I saw last year. The black mask and big black bill were conspicuous. At first sight it looked like it had a grey crown but this was a trick of the light, the upperparts were cool, sandy brown, contrasting with the milky coffee colour of the underparts, the throat paler than the breast. I understand that's the most obvious difference between red-tailed and isabelline shrikes. The tail was dark mahogany red getting brighter and redder towards the tail coverts while the rump was paler and sandier than the back. The contrast in colour between the tail and the upperparts was very striking, and very different to the brown shrike I saw a few years ago.

(I think that officially we should be calling red-tailed shrikes "Turkestan shrikes" and isabelline shrikes "Daurian shrikes" to prevent any confusion now both firms have been split from the old "isabelline shrike" species.)

I wandered down the path to the cliff, assailed by ringlets and meadow browns in the tall grass as I walked through it. Reed buntings, skylarks, meadow pipits and corn buntings bobbed up and down or flew between fields. At one point there were three birds singing from adjacent fence posts, a mipit, a skylark and a corn bunting and they scattered as a crow passed low overhead before I could get a picture. The breeze coming in off the sea made walking a whole lot more comfortable.

Bempton Cliffs 

I haven't been to a busy seabird colony since before lockdown and I hadn't realised how much I'd missed them. The gannets, fulmars and kittiwakes were making most of the noise but there were plenty enough guillemots, razorbills and puffins to be seen and if you looked hard enough there were a few shags fishing round the bottom of the cliffs below.

Gannets

Razorbils

Kittiwakes

Puffin

Guillemots

The white dots are gannets

Gannets

Gannets

Some of the gannets are rebuilding their nests

Gannet

Puffin

Gannets

I had a dawdle round, looking to see what was about and remembering that the last time I was this close to gannets and puffins I had 36 photos to a roll of film. All the while I was scanning round for anything that might look like an albatross, letting myself get distracted whenever a two-year old gannet flew under the cliffs. I said: "Oh dear," when somebody told me I'd just missed it. As I'd walking over one of the headlands over a cliff the people at the viewpoint I'd just left were treated to its flying in and back out again. It repeated the trick as I was walking back again but didn't come back a third time.

Razorbill

Guillemots

Ah well, I'd had the shrike. I sat down for five minutes' seawatching to rest my legs and spotted a big object on the water just over a mile out. The visibility was good enough to see it but not identify it so I dismissed it as one of the buoys marking the channel used by cliff watching boats. Then the object took to the air. From that distance I assumed it was a lesser black-back then I realised it was looking as big as the gannets flying about half a mile further in. And there was something about the wings, they carried on where a gull's wing should finish. It flew by something that was either a kittiwake or a herring gull and that clinched the size factor. A very unsatisfying life tick but they all count in the end. Now I know Bempton's not as inaccessible as I feared I can save up for another go.

Record shot: black-browed albatross

Very heavily-cropped edit of the above photo

I got myself a cup of tea then walked straight back into Bempton for the train back to Sheffield. There were more tree sparrows, yellowhammers and whitethroats in the hedges and a lesser whitethroat called from the middle of a nettle patch in a hedge bottom. The only chiffchaff of the day was singing in the village as I passed through.

Yellowhammer

An excellent day's birdwatching, a couple of life ticks (my British list is now 289, the year list 191), the renewal of close acquaintance with seabirds and a nice five mile toddle to get a bit of exercise.

Female sparrowhawk, Sheffield Station on the way home.