It was headless chicken routine,a combination of grabbing my gear together and trying to get dressed at the same time,the wife thinking i was having some sort of epileptic fit or something,i said my goodbyes and i was on the road.
The drive to Easington was a blur and i don't know how i got there so quickly,but i arrived at the gas terminal in about 45 minutes.
I crashed out of the car,grabbed my bins and camera crossed over the road and there was the crowd of about 30 birders.
I was welcomed by Dave Tucker 'it's over here' and there it was,the most stunning bird i have clapped eyes on in a very long time,at this point i couldn't stop shaking.
At first i just kept looking at it through the bins and kept thinking to myself i can't bloody believe what I'm looking at.It was feeding on an old car park where the old school used to be adjacent to the gas terminal,just a spit from where i had been watching the Olive-backed Pipit the weekend before.
I spent the next two hours watching this supremely beautiful bird as it fed quietly,picking insects and seeds from the ground showing more distantly at first,but then for the last 30 minutes or so before dark,about 30 feet away!
The bird was most probably a first winter,as it wasn't as bright as the recent Shetland bird,with a slightly duller head pattern,but it was still a stunningly striking bird.
The first record for Britain had only been found 4 days earlier on the afore mentioned Shetland mainland,so this was more importantly the first record for mainland Britain,Yorkshire,Spurn and a new species for nearly everyone present including myself.
As i write this blog i still can't believe i have had the privilege of seeing this beautiful species,what an absolute cracker.
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