A mad idea from Brian to leave home at 12 o'clock and drive 4 hours up to Bempton Cliffs for a lifer is agreed by Jimmy and myself. As mad as it is you don't get to see an Albatross every week, and it is always a pleasure to visit this fantastic reserve. We arrive just after 4 am to find the car parks almost full, there must be over 300 birders already lining the cliffs, so full of hope that the bird is still around and that people could get us onto it straight away is a pipe dream as we are told the bird had not been seen leaving the roost site on the cliff and people had been on site since 3 am and there was no sign of it anywhere.
The weather is horrible, cold, windy, drizzly & no bird not a great start to the day.
It gets to 7 am and the mood is not good all around the now very large twitch, then those fantastic words are heard when a birder shouts "there it is" everybody is now on the move to get to see it.
My first sight of it is as it flies around with the Gannets and then heads straight towards us, what a great sight, it was a lot harder to pick out than we thought it would be as it blended in with the Gannets until we get to see the black wings & the head size in better light.
Over the next few hours, we get some great views of the Albatross as it flies up and down the cliffs and then lands on the cliff face to give us wonderful scope views.
As you would expect the place is now buzzing and we see a few people that we know and a few faces that we bump into at twitches like this to make this a great decision to come all this way, just the long drive home now but well worth it to see this fantastic lifer.
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| Black-browed Albatross |
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