Make It Easy On Yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DirmGKf8Ndo&app=desktop

A few days of easterly airflow preceeded a trip to the coast where we met up with Rich Baines and Jo Ruth for a family catch up.  Wells was a good choice with a bracing walk, beach for the kids, a cafe and a bit of passive birding to enjoy.  Just around The Dell a young Red-backed Shrike, all rich browns and gingers was hawking beetles from the field edge and fence line.  Although close, everytime I tried to film it the reeds just got in the way - I gave it up as a bad job.  

There was general excitement as we got regular updates from Jono about the Humpback Whales he was watching off the Great Cape, Flamborough Head - Rich's company Yorkshire Coast Nature pioneering the increasingly popular Whale watching trips off the Yorkshire coast.

On the beach we had a ludicrously speculative gaze at the sea and pottered.  Me and Rich gave ourselves quarter of an hour to find the Red-breasted Flycatcher which we did, pretty pronto, and enjoyed some good views.

Ice Creams and play parks beckoned, I picked up the original "Firsts for Britain" Poyser - for a price and checked the Starlings optomistically.  We ambled back down the seawall having had a very relaxed non-birding, birdy day.  We'd made it easy on ourselves.

So I went and spoilt it a bit.  After we'd said bye to Rich and Jo I left the family to get fish and chips and twitched down to Warham Greens where I just about saw the Brown Shrike, from below, in silhoutte roosting up in the centre of a hawthorn and a much better Pied Flycatcher flicking down the lane in the gathering gloom.