Spurn Point: outing with Shepley Birds and Wildlife Group

With a hundred miles journey each way to Spurn Point it needed to be special. We left and returned in rain but it stayed dry whilst we were there.
We arrived at the Kilnsea car park having already seen seventeen species including a family of Grey Partridge, Pheasants, pigeons(Feral and Wood),gulls(Black headed, Herring and Lesser Black Backed) corvids (Rook, Crow, Jackdaw and Magpie) and some late departing Swallows.
At Spurn we heard a rumour of Jack Snipe and spent some time trying to identify a feathered creature just visible through the reeds. There was general amusement as eventually a Mallard reared its head. Then we watched fascinated as a Snipe fed amongst the reeds and debated the identity of small brown birds (eventually agreed to include songthrush and linnets )
After picnic lunch on the car park we went to the Sea hide, already occupied by large men with large telescopes and radio links to spotters up the coast who announced what birds could be expected. For me armed only with binoculars, ID's of Sooty Shearwater and Great Skuas would have owed as much to a vivid imagination as to reality but the watchers seemed certain enough.
By then the time of high tide was near and this brought all the waders up from the Humber mud flats close to shore on the river side of the headland. Telescopes were needed to identify the massed birds, although Little Egrets, Greater Black Backed Gulls, Shelduck and Curlew were plain to see with only binoculars.
At day’s end the nine of us had a joint list of over sixty species and we added a final roadside Moorhen on the way home.
And the highlights? For some there were ticks, of Skua and Shearwater and Scaup. For me the Partridge family in the middle of a ploughed field, the best view ever of a Snipe and a Kestrel that settled on a wire over our heads and then hovered even closer. Above all there was the sheer number and movements of so many different kinds of birds massed on the mud as high tide approached. Yes it was special and it was worth the journey.
The days list for the group(63 species) Arctic Skua, Bar-tailed Godwit, Black Headed Gull, Black-tailed Godwit, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Brent Goose, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Collared Dove, Common Sandpiper, Cormorant, Crow, Curlew, Dunlin, Dunnock, Feral Pigeon, Gannet, Goldfinch, Golden Plover, Great Northern Diver, Greater Black Backed Gull, Great Tit, Greenfinch, Grey Partridge, Grey Plover, Guillemot, Herring Gull, House Martin, House Sparrow, Jackdaw, Kestrel, Knot, Lapwing, Lesser Black Backed Gull, Linnet, Little Egret, Little Grebe, Magpie, Mallard, Meadow Pipit, Moorhen, Mute Swan, Oystercatcher, Pheasant, Pink Footed Goose, Redshank, Reed Bunting, Ringed Plover, Robin, Rook, Scaup, Shelduck, Snipe, Song Thrush, Sooty Shearwater, Sparrowhawk, Starling, Swallow, Tree Sparrow, Turnstone, Wood Pigeon, Wren.