Now that Christmas is over and I have finished dealing with moving all my stuff out of my flat I have a chance to write about my final walk to Eske. The reason that it was my last visit is that I am soon moving back to Thailand, after nearly 4 years in the UK – for the next few weeks I will be doing some birding in Kent as I am staying with my family there.

Although I was busy on Saturday 22nd December, I managed to find a couple of hours to walk along the River Hull to the lake at Eske. Foggy weather made visibility rather poor but on the walk up I got some fantastic views of a hunting Barn Owl which then caught something in the rough grass and gave me a long look at it as it sat on the ground eating. A little further along a large flock of Fieldfares and a few Redwings were hopping around picking up insects from the feet of a herd of cows.

At the lake the numbers of ducks were quite high with over 200 Wigeon, 150+ Mallard, 2 Gadwall, 20+ Shoveler, 30-40 Tufted Duck, 3 Pochard and 2 female Goldeneye although just 1 Great Crested Grebe, 2 Greylag Geese and no coots were a surprise. Other birds on the lake included 7 Cormorant and a large group of Common and Black-headed Gulls.

Very little else was around on this quiet day, just a few common passerines such as Goldfinch, Blue Tit, Wren and Blackbird, with some flyovers including 200+ Golden Plovers, about 100 Lapwings and 7 Lesser Blak-backed Gulls.

With such cold weather and limited time I didn’t hang around for long and headed back to the car – on the way back a small group of 7 Meadow Pipits accompanied me and 2 Reed Buntings called from a willow tree. Almost back to my car a nice Song Thrush began foraging on a grassy field and 2 Collared Doves flew overhead.

I would imagine that it will be some time before I am back in East Yorkshire again, but when I am I will certainly check out Swinemoor and Eske. In the meantime this blog will continue, although for the next few weeks the focus will be in Kent and then move on to Thailand.