Scarborough

Red-necked grebe, Burton Riggs

I had rather a lot of travel vouchers to use up, the weather forecast for the Northwest was persisting down and there was a red-necked grebe showing well on a lake ten minutes' walk from Seamer Station so I got myself the train to York and got the Scarborough train to Seamer and went to see what I would see.

It was, literally, ten minutes' walk from Seamer Station. The weather was grey and gloomy but considerably better than what we'd left behind at Leeds. I climbed the steps up to the main road, walked across the bridge over the railway line and dual carriageway, and dropped down onto the path that goes past Morrisons and the retail park, crossed the road and the first road on the other side took me straight to Burton Riggs Nature Reserve. Along the way I bumped into singing great tits, robins, wrens and coal tits and a male bullfinch shredding the buds on a cherry tree.

I'd barely entered the reserve when I was at the lake the grebe was using. Canada geese, mallards and greylags sat on the banks and there, cruising no more than thirty yards away, was a beautiful red-necked grebe. I've never seen one in breeding plumage before, it's pretty special. For some reason a couple of pairs of greylags took exception to it but it only ever took any notice when a goose flew at it, the grebe vanished underwater and bobbed right back up in the same place as the goose overshot it. 

Red-necked grebe, Burton Riggs 

Red-necked grebe, Burton Riggs

Red-necked grebe, Burton Riggs

Red-necked grebe and greylags, Burton Riggs

Red-necked grebe, Burton Riggs

Red-necked grebe and greylag, Burton Riggs

I watched the grebe for a while, taking lots of photos and wondering whether a bright, sunny day would have made it more difficult to get good photos. I suspect it would have.

Burton Riggs 

Greylags, Burton Riggs 

I've never been here before so I had a bit of a wander. There were more geese and mallards on the large lake together with a couple of tufted ducks and a large and noisy raft of herring gulls. Robins, dunnocks and blackbirds, lots of blackbirds, ducked and dived around the paths.

Scarborough Harbour 

I walked back to the station and had five minutes to wait for the 7a bus to Scarborough, getting off at St Nicholas's Road and climbing down the staircases to the seafront. The weather had closed in, it was very mizzly and the visibility out to sea was pretty poor but I was here so I had a walk round the harbour. And I was glad I did, a great northern diver was having a wash and brush-up in the middle of the harbour and kept drifting over my way.

Great northern diver, Scarborough Harbour 

Great northern diver, Scarborough Harbour

The visibility from the pier was distinctly better than from the beach and when I climbed onto the seawall I could see a good half mile out to sea. Not that I was seeing much at first: a couple of herring gulls, a great black-back and my first kittiwake of the year. My luck started to change as I walked round, there were more birds about and visibility was around a mile. I got my eye in with another, distant, kittiwake and spotted three gannets flying in a line a bit further out. A shag flew by and I found a razorbill bobbing about on the waves a few hundred yards out. I then made a mess of identifying a red-throated diver until it cruised past the razorbill and provided a sense of scale. A red-necked grebe drifting round nearby added to my confusion. You wait ages for a red-necked grebe and get two in one day. I had more luck with a couple of passing guillemots and the fulmars soaring round the cliff by the castle made it dead easy for me.

A distant red-necked grebe, Scarborough 

Knees and wind both suggested I didn't want to wander round the North Bay and clamber up all them steps in the rain so I made my way to the station through Scarborough's Bohemian quarter and reassured myself I hadn't hallucinated the shop window full of stuffed foxes. 

Scarborough Harbour