Monday, May 17, 2010

17th May, 2010.

Another early start, this time to visit the Thorne Moors area, known also as the Humberside Head Levels National Nature Reserve. Known to have had human activity associated with it since the Stone Age, to have been part of a vast hunting area administered by successive past Monarchs, it was latterly the site of peat extraction over a number of years against which much campaigning took place by the Nature Conservancy and RSPB. Eventually all was resolved and the site is now retained by the nation in posterity. A superb area for birds, botanical and entomological interests and a vast expanse and array of peat land, moorland, birch scrub and woodland and wetlands.

For us it produced singing Turtle Doves, Nightingale, Grasshopper, Reed, Sedge, Willow and Garden Warblers, Whitethroat, Blackap, and Chiffchaff in a veritable wall of sound throughout the morning. Marsh Harrier, Kestrel and Sparrowhawk all appeared together with Cuckoo and commoner species in what was a good morning's birding.

On to Blacktoft Sands Reserve on the Humber where endless Marsh Harriers put in an appearance and a few Avocet sat on nests within the nesting Black-headed Gulls. A few Yellow Wagtails occurred, again a species that has reduced dramatically in the UK in recent years, is nowadays a pleasure and relief to come across.
The evening saw us appraising what was currently around in the County, and plotting and planning how best we might put together our journeys, commencing with the next two days to be spent at Spurn coupled with the promise of SE winds.

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