Redcar

Herring gulls, a great black-back, turnstones and a drake common eider

I thought I'd get the Transpennine Express to Redcar to do a bit of seawatching and use up the travel vouchers they gave me when they cancelled the trains on the last two attempts. You'll never guess what…

Luckily I was very early for the cancelled train so I could get the Newcastle train and change at Darlington for the local stopping train to Redcar. There's rail works at Stalybridge so the train was diverted via Sowerby Bridge, giving me a chance to put the nature reserve at Cromwell Bottom on my radar. I keep seeing reports from there, now I know where it is. The on-train birdwatching was consistent, mostly woodpigeons and corvids with plenty of gulls — black-headed near the tops and lesser black-backs over the lowlands — and nearly every mile of canal had its pair of Canada geese. There was a decent smattering of buzzards and kestrels and a red kite just outside Mirfield, these days it's not often I pass through this stretch of Yorkshire without seeing one.

Herring gulls

Sanderlings and herring gulls

It was high tide at Redcar beach and the weather was gloomy and windy but dry and surprisingly mild. A few dozen herring gulls loafed on the rocks by the lifeboat station with a great black-back and a couple of common eiders. Turnstones skittered all over the rocks and the steps at the base of the sea wall while sanderlings ran around the remaining sand like clockwork mice and a few redshanks foraged in the rock pools. An oystercatcher flew in to join the loafing crowd while a couple of others flew by. 

The sea was choppy and the tide was on the turn and I struggled to see anything sitting on the sea so I walked down the beach avoiding the roosting birds but constantly tripping over turnstones. Some cormorants flew by a few hundred yards out to sea and further out I could see herring gulls fishing with their hover and lunge actions, one of them flew in carrying a dab and made sure to land well away from hungry mouths to eat its prize.

Redcar Mudstones 

Gryphaea fossils

The rocks here are of special scientific interest, the Redcar Mudstones, an odd sort of shale which weathers to look like somebody's laid tarmac over the top (perhaps I'm just too used to much older shales which have had time to become brittle, these are Liassic rocks from the bottom of the Jurassic period and most of my geology was with Palaeozoic rocks). Every so often I'd trip over a layer of ancient oyster beds full of Gryphaea, "the Devil's toenails."

Herring gulls, eiders and common scoters, honestly

Partway down the beach I picked out a raft of common scoters and at least one velvet scoter which obligingly stretched its wings so I could see a flash of white. Then I noticed that not all of the white flecks on top of the sea were foam and spray, there was a raft of eiders out in the distance. I wandered down the beach, what I was gaining by getting closer I was losing by elevation — I was getting fairly good, albeit still distant, views of the birds when they crested the waves but most of the time they were out of sight. The drake eiders were easy enough to pick out, the ducks were dark blobs and every so often I'd mistake a raft of scoters for duck eiders and vice versa. What looked like a duck velvet scoter was with the eiders and that complicated things a bit. The tide started to ebb, letting the ducks linger slightly longer on the crests and giving me more of a chance of seeing what I was looking at.

I'd just come to the conclusion I wasn't going to see the king eider despite its having been reported here an hour previously when I spotted a something. There were a few not-quite-white-not-quite-dark birds in the raft, first-Winter drakes in monochrome patchwork starting to get their adult colours. One of them wasn't quite right, having an all-dark body and a pale but not white head. From this distance it looked grey, which isn't a colour common eiders go in for in any plumage. Then I lost it again in the waves. I found it again ten minutes later and wasn't much the wiser until I caught a touch of a brownish red tint from the front of its head and it was gone again. If I hadn't had king eider on my radar this would have been a what on earth was that bird, definitely something I hadn't seen before but a puzzle. 

I convinced myself I was just stringing myself along with a bit of wishful thinking and spent five minutes looking at turnstones and sanderlings to reset mind and brain before going back to the eiders. The tide had taken them and the scoters further out but I could still pick them out when they bobbed up in the waves. Drake eiders? check… duck eiders? check… black-and-white young drake eiders? check… big dark dreadnought of a duck that's probably a velvet scoter? check… and one duck that was black at the back and pale at the front. I gave it an hour but that was my best sighting of my first king eider, definitely a job for a telescope, the bins just couldn't do it.

A bit of a disappointing encounter with my first lifer of the year but they all count. It brings my British list up to 296 and the year list up to 141, comfortably on target for 200 at the end of the year.

I put a spurt on and managed to catch the train back to Manchester, which was actually running and got us back there, albeit half an hour late. Along the way the intermittent patches of late Spring sunshine brought out rabbits and roe deers in the fields. It was nice to get the bogeyman off my back, to be honest I was getting more of a thing about not arriving in Redcar than I was about seeing the bird. It was good to get both.

Redcar beach 

Redcar

Eiders

Transpennine Express have got a promotion on at the moment where old folk like me can buy tickets to distant parts for £20 if bought online before the day of travel. I thought I'd give it a go. There's a direct train to Redcar from Oxford Road which is very straightforward so I decided I'd go for a couple of hours' North Sea seawatching.

I got the train and we chugged along without incident. It was ferociously busy between Huddersfield and York, as usual, but I'd managed to get myself a window seat and I was settled down watching the landscape roll by. One thing's for certain, whatever's been going on in Greater Manchester there's no shortage of woodpigeons in North Yorkshire.

It had been grey and a bit misty in Manchester, I had an attack of optimism when the clouds parted over the Pennines with a milky sun, then it became grey and misty again after York. I didn't hold out much by any seawatching as I walked down to Redcar Beach from the station.

Redcar Beach 

The first thing I spotted on the beach, besides the passing black-headed gulls and herring gulls, was a knot of birdwatchers a couple of hundred yards beyond the seafront cinema. I looked over to where they were pointing and saw a raft of eiders bobbing round in the surf. I kept an eye on them both as I walked down, scanning round every so often to see if anything else was about and being rewarded with cormorants, oystercatchers and a passing razorbill. I wasn't far off the crowd when I found what they were looking at: a female long-tailed duck amongst the eiders. I'm rather tripping over long-tailed ducks at the moment, which is nice as they've been noticeably lacking the past couple of Winters. 

Eiders

Long-tailed duck

There were lots of herring gulls on the sea as well as a bunch of smaller, dark gulls which had me baffled for a few minutes. Luckily there were a couple more amongst the black-headed gulls and common gulls on the beach. There's hardly an Autumn these days where I don't get myself confused over first-Winter common gulls. A noisy bunch of oystercatchers joined the gulls and started feeding at the tideline. Sanderlings and redshanks flew by but didn't settle.

Common scoters

I walked further up, keeping an eye on the sea all the while. The distant flock of gulls in the mist around the wind turbines became a flock of herring gulls and a couple of rafts of common scoters as I got a closer look. The scoters seemed all to be female-type birds, I couldn't see any black drakes unless they were in the misty distance. A couple of the scoters were slightly set apart from the rafts and were bigger and broader of beam. It took me a while to be sure they were velvet scoters, I've only ever seen one before and that was on a bright, sunny day some years ago. 

Divers. The bird on the right is definitely a red-throated diver, the one in the middle is probably a red-throated diver, I'm not sure of the one on the left.

Then I spotted three larger birds a few hundred yards further out. It didn't take me long to be sure they were divers but which one(s)? I struck lucky as they floated in a bit. One was definitely a red-throated diver. One might have been one. One looked slightly bigger but I wasn't sure if it wasn't just a trick of perspective. I lost them in the swell of the waves and while I was trying to find them again I spotted yet another diver a bit further along and further out that was definitely bigger than a red-throated diver and a lot more black-and-white. A black-throated diver, I've never seen one close to and this one wasn't for coming any nearer to shore and soon disappeared into the mists at the base of the wind turbines. I'd have had more luck with a telescope but I concluded a couple of years ago that I'm too old for lugging a telescope with me on public transport. A chap with a telescope came by and I pointed out where I'd been seeing the divers and between us we found a couple of red-throated divers which might have been two of the trio I'd been looking at before.

The mist rolled in some more and the light got worse. I'd had a couple of hour's exercise and birdwatching and added a couple more to the year list so I called it a day and managed to get back to the station with five minutes to spare for the next train back to Manchester. All in all, not a bad trip out on a gloomy sort of day.

Redcar Beach 

Redcar

Greater sand plover

It's been a quiet August so I thought I'd go on a twitch. There's been a greater sand plover on Redcar beach this past few days and there's an hourly train from Manchester to Redcar that's less than three hours' (not exactly cheap) ride so off I went. The journey up was a tad fraught because it was only half the usual number of carriages and it gets very busy indeed between Manchester and Leeds but the rest of the journey was very nice indeed.

Juvenile great black-backs

It's only a short walk from Redcar Central to the beach. The plover had been reported first thing at the Eastern end of the beach so I headed that way just in time to bump into a few people heading West. A line of birdwatchers a mile in the distance showed the bird's current location.

A line of birdwatchers 

I wandered thataway, taking the opportunity to check to see what was on the rocky outcrops on the tideline. Gulls — black-headed and herring — loafed and squabbled, cormorants dried their wings and oystercatchers prised mussels off the rocks. A small fishing boat had just beached and was being towed  up to the promenade by a tractor, leaving behind a few fish heads eagerly snapped up by a bunch of great black-backs.

Great black-backs

I reached the line of birdwatchers in time to spot two plovers having a fight in the middle of some beached seaweed. One was larger and paler than the other, for a moment I was worried that I'd sighted my target only to have it chased off by a ringed plover. As it happened I needn't have worried, the two birds settled back down again, the ringed plover feeding on a stretch of seaweed about twenty yards ahead of us, the greater sand plover further out towards the tideline. It showed really well, a lovely little bird, but was a devil to try and photograph as it was very active, scurrying and dashing to and fro across the weed. Compared to the ring plover it was slightly larger and chunkier with significantly longer legs; its back was a warm sandy brown and, most conspicuously, the breast band was broad and bright rusty orange. A very delightful little bird.

Greater sand plover and black-headed gulls

Greater sand plover

Greater sand plover and black-headed gull

I caught some movement in the corner of my eye. A couple of common gulls were loafing on a rocky outcrop which had accumulated a lot of seaweed debris. A sanderling and a turnstone were busy feeding in here, often disappearing as they burrowed into the weed.

Sanderling

I'd spent a while admiring the sand plover and decided to walk up the beach awhile. It had been very cloudy when I arrived (it had been pouring down when we passed through Middlesbrough) but there was a stiff breeze coming in straight from the Baltic (and cutting straight through the bladder) that broke the clouds up and gave odd moments of bright sunshine.

There were more herring gulls and black-headed gulls. Small groups of sanderlings, never more than a handful, skittered around like clockwork mice, paying no heed to tide, person or, indeed, galloping horses.

Sanderling

Sanderling

I tried a bit of seawatching with no conspicuous success: more gulls and cormorants, a common tern and a couple of Sandwich terns. It was worth a go, though, this was my first visit here and I wasn't sure what to expect. As it was, it was a very pleasant walk, the birdwatching was good even though there wasn't a lot of variety to it, and I got another addition to the life list. Not a bad day's work.

Redcar Beach