9th November. Seals and some ranting!

The Seals at Donna Nook are an annual event in my calendar so having planned this trip over a week ago the added bonus of a couple of decent 'rares' made it more the worthwhile.
Not wanting to push my luck too much I decided to do the seals first (not in the biblical sense of course). As is the norm there was lots of "ooh"ing and "aah"ing at the baby seals. There were a few birds namely 4 Snow Buntings and a House Martin, flying around with a large flock of Starlings and a couple of skeins of Pink-feet.

First birding stop was the female Desert Wheatear at nearby Saltfleet Haven. Not the most obliging Desert Wheatear that I've ever seen but it did eventually come close enough for some record shots.
Now for a rant with some minor swearing

It's a long while since there's been a twitchable Steppe Grey Shrike in Britain, so a very obliging individual near Grainthorpe would have been tempting even without the seals. It sounded flawless, walk around a mile and half and the bird would be showing very well. There was even the 'view from a sensible distance' message on the pager. So after a slog across the floodbank we arrived where the bird had been showing well. Unfortunately my arrival coincided with the outing of the mentally challenged f**kwits annual birding trip. To me 'keep at a sensible distance' means don't chase the little bastard around all afternoon pissing off everyone else present. Which is why I only got this record shot.


Anyone who has decent frame filling images was definitely not keeping at a sensible distance. Apart from the flushing behaviour several birders thought nothing wrong with standing on the farmers kale crop, despite the path being wide enough to get a bus down. Bad behaviour at a bird really pisses me off it is an all too common occurrence these days, with larger than ever numbers of birders behaving like selfish morons. After a while I got pissed off with the flushing tactics but more so the blatant ignorant twats trampling on the crops. A suggestion (ok it was a little patronising) to a group crop tramplers that it might not be the best of ideas to walk all over the crops was met with a torrent of abuse particularly from a talentless fat bastard in a Manure FC hat. Well fatty I got a photo of you and your mates for my name and shame gallery below.

Image removed. Copies available on request!

Another Wanker

This also includes a photographer wandering around amiously who later had the shrike at his feet along with Lincolnshire's long standing flusher who despite agreeing with me re the crops wandered straight in to them oblivious to my dropped jaw. By now I'd had enough and decided to head back. Things picked up on the way back, a figure running towards us like the bionic man turned out to be LGRE on a year listing mission complete with his hangers on. This amused Jo and Beth as neither had ever met the 'legend' in the flesh confirming that he truly is not all there. However I'd rather have a bus load of Lee clones than the pricks I had to tolerate earlier!!

Edit

I was probably a little unfair in stating that all frame filling images were a result of getting too close. This bird does come close, but during my visit it was pushed right down the lane and would I'm sure have come close if people had stopped charging at it.