The Juvenile Birder

 Seawatch and Intro to a Notepad!! We arrived at Flamborough Head at 6:40am, in hopes of seeing Pomarine and Long-tailed Skua. We saw a few Arctic & Great Skua as well as thousands of Manx Shearwater and Red-throated Diver. Suddenly, one of the seawatchers, Craig calls "adult Pom Skua heading north."  I desperately try to get my scope on it, but couldn't. He then lets me look through his scope and says that the bird was going to go through there in a few seconds. I looked through it, in eager anticipation and then there it was, with its spoon-like projections on the tail. I cherish observing the Pom Skua, before going back to my own scope. A few Sooty Shearwater and Little Gulls also flew past  afterwards, but nothing else. Craig taught me about how to identify Shearwaters and Skuas in the distance, and that identifying seabirds was a process of elimination, much of it guess work and he felt it necessary that people shout out their opinion and encourage discourse when...

 Flamborough Seawatching Festival!! We arrived at Flamborough Head at 7:00am in hopes of seeing some lifer seabirds. When we arrived, we had heard that they have had a Pomarine Skua (a lifer for me) and a Sabine's Gull earlier in the morning. We seated ourselves in the seawatching hide and scanned the sea. Tony, one of the members of the observatory, gave me a scope to use while in the hide since it was a guided seawatch. There was a big bouy as well as a distant rig and fishing boat that we used as landmarks. It didn't take long for me to get my first lifer, a Manx Shearwater, as a flock of them flew past the bouy, soon after followed by a lifer Sooty Shearwater. We continued to wait as two juvenile Long-tailed Skuas were reported flying past Hornsea towards us. About 40 minutes after that report, someone says "Long-tailed Skua juvenile distantly heading North." The same bird then landed on the sea and with the approaching fog, came out of view. A couple of Great Sku...

  Near Death Experience! (distant digiscoped Arctic Skua (x2) on sea) We arrived at Spurn YWT at 7:00am in hopes of seeing a reported Wryneck. We asked a site volunteer directions towards Middle Camp, where the wryneck was, and he said walk along the beach and pointed to the beach but the estuary blocked the view of the beach and we thought he meant to cross the estuary (don't want to get him fired). We walked over the grass until we were within touching distance of the mud. And when we went in, we sank in the soft mud and lost a pair of shoes.We knew someone called Phil who did it before and mentioned soft sand so we kept repeated, if Phil could do it, we can do it. But after telling him about the quicksand, he called and said "Get off the estuary, it's really dangerous, go along the road to a beach with soft sand, if I meant mud I'd have said mud,". We did it but unfortunately couldn't retrieve the shoes as it was too dangerous so we left them. I did notice ...