27th January

It was back to square one on the weather front with lots more drizzly rain and reduced visibility. The day's only reports were of a Chiffchaff at Southwell, 12 Common Scoter, 8 Red-throated Divers and 2 Shelducks through off the Bill and 5 Shelducks at Ferrybridge. After dark a Golden Plover was heard heading north over the Bill.

Probably rather optimistically we'll claim the Golden Plover low over the Obs on a mild, misty night had all the feel of an inbound migrant:



And back to something from many moons ago. When Peter Moore kindly let us post his record shots of the Humpback Whale a couple of weekends ago we mentioned a previous record back in the 90s; although we quoted 1991 as the year in question we now suspect it was actually in late May/early June 1992 - the details are sketchy largely because this was in the quaint old days before mobiles and none of the local birding community heard about the animal's presence until after the event (...if anyone does have a definitive date do please let us know). Anyway, there is a cracking series of photos of this event taken by Andrew White that we're not sure have ever been published before and are well worth a look at © Andrew White: