The forecast didn't look great for very much on the east coast with SW veering W winds and westerly airflows across the continent right out to the Urals. Jono had the day off work and I was visiting the folks in York so we headed out to Flamborough early doors. After the ever perilous descent beneath the fog station we settled in to watch the sea for a bit. There was lots of light, mostly southerly, movement of duck which accumulated into more impressive numbers. The variety was pleasing, offering good identification practice as sea and freshwater duck, waders, gulls and incoming passerines all presented points of discussion.
Just shy of 4 hours later we headed up to the cafe for a bacon bap and on checking the bird news saw that there had been 2 White-billed Divers seen flying South at Hartlepool Headland just 30mins earlier. That changed our plan to walk the headland and we headed back down to seawatch. Brett Richards had been good to his word "What time are you giving it til Brett?" "10 minutes after you lads" his deadpan answer. 😂😂
We kept watch and count through till 1.45 - we figured 2 hrs was long enough for a diver to have reached us. Having scaled the cliff again we headed down to the golf course willows and as Jono walked up the path I stayed on the open side checking for movement. I had routinely kept my eye on the sea when suddenly a large, brown and white diver appeared flying across the bay just offshore - in my binoculars it looked exactly as my search image for White-billed Diver should, I shouted very loudly to Jono to get on it and got my scope on it - boom. I worked instantaneously down the bird noting sandy brown colouration, thick neck, no dark collar, no cap, smudgy open face and then the clincher a huge pale banana bill. I hadn't time to put my tripod legs up and too quickly the scope views were gone and I was left hollering directions to Jono who was running down the path and following the bird in the bins as it flew out of view past the headland.
I wasn't cool over this sighting and froze, stunned, just repeating "I don't know what to do." Jono took charge, he'd seen the bird but wasn't on the adrenaline hit I was riding. We did take ourselves back to the fog station to check whether the couple of birders we'd spoken to had seen it and to check if it had landed and put ourselves in a better position if it happened to fly back North for any reason. After a good search we decided to settle ourselves with a check of old fall which, apart from a dozen or so migrant Blackbirds, was as quiet as we had expected. Later in the evening news of our diver heading South past Filey at 2pm was welcome. The bird was described as " a beast of a diver" and I couldn't agree more.
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