With a Black Stork turning up
at Spurn just under a month ago, I sadly never got the opportunity to make it up
there due to a combination of work and a week’s holiday to Scilly, and the bird
had unfortunately moved on before I had returned. Since then, there have been
sporadic reports around Sunk Island and Stone Creek, just half an hour to the
west, but these were merely flight views – never at a nailed on site to twitch
like it was at Spurn. However, this all changed on Friday, when photos on the
Yorkshire Birders Facebook page showed the bird in question frequenting the
fields and creeks in the Sunk Island area, with the posts seeming to suggest
that it had been settled for some time, having favourite haunts around the Old
Hall area. With one poster even reporting that the Black Stork had come back to
one creek in particular to roost for two nights running now, I knew this was
the best opportunity I had to catch up with this often hard to connect with
species.
Getting precise info on
exactly which creek it was, me and Alex made the 2 ½ hour journey to Sunk
Island to see if we could track it down. With no sign in the creek at half 2,
we turned to plan B – driving slowly up and down Cherry Cobb Sands Road to see
if we could spot the Stork in one of the fields or ditches there. This was
where the majority of flyover sightings on the bird reports had originated
from, as well as some of the photos from just a few days earlier, and I hoped
we could either jam in on it in flight or find it stood in one of the fields.
Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy, and whilst a flyover Grey Heron got our
hearts racing early on, there was no sign of our Stork. Several Curlew feeding
in the fields were a nice consolation, as were 2 flyover Green Sands, and 7
Whinchats in just one small patch were clear evidence that autumn migration was
well underway.
Knowing that our best shot was
the Stork coming in to roost that evening, we headed back to the small creek at
half 6, hoping the bird would return here again. A tidal creek, with water
levels controlled by the Humber, the water was now much higher than earlier on
in the afternoon, although there was just a single Little Egret and a Common
Sandpiper taking advantage of the tidal pickings. The owner of one of the
cottages told us that he had seen the Black Stork that very morning making its
way up the creek, and we wondered whether the bird had remained feeding in the
channel all day, out of sight at the other end of the field.
Alex’s theory was proved
correct, as at around half 7 I spotted something large, black and white
creeping around the far corner – the Stork!! We watched as it slowly crept
through the reeds and in to view – the whole of its body now on show, along
with the exceptionally long legs and bill. Eventually, the Stork worked its way
down the channel, feeding on the morsels that the tide had brought in and
coming to a patch in the open, giving us great views of this continental
visitor.
With a bit of an influx of
Black Storks this summer, this particular individual was a juvenile, ringed in
France before making its way across the channel with at least 1 other sibling –
the bird that had frequented the Loch of Strathbeg for some time. An extremely
hard species to catch up with in my opinion, with the majority of sightings as
flyovers in different parts of the country, it has been a few years since the
last twitchable bird.
With the light now fading and
the Stork seemingly settled down for the night in the creek, we left it in
peace and headed home – 5 hours of searching had definitely paid off and I had
finally caught up with a bird that had been tormenting me all summer!
With news out later that
evening of its whereabouts, the bird was still there in the creek early the
next morning with reports at dawn, before flying off at just after 7am. After a
brief return, it flew off again at 10:10am, circling high over Stone Creek
before gaining height and disappearing off south over the Humber where it was
lost to view. With no reports on the Sunday afternoon or the bank holiday Monday, it was clearly a stroke of luck that I
managed to catch up with it on the Saturday, and I’m exceptionally glad I made
the effort!
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