It’s 6.30am I roll over with the intention of snoozing my alarm, again, but as much as I love my sleep there’s a little something called Migfest luring me from my slumber. A weary walk towards the kitchen for a cup of that wonderful elixir also known as coffee results in an imperfectly poured latte and a little granola with yoghurt and honey to fuel the drive from Cheshire to Spurn. We loaded up the van and off we went for a day of bird watching.
Now I’m a complete beginner when it comes to bird watching so I had no idea what to expect from Migfest or what I might expect to see. The day was quickly warming up with the sun shining for everyone to enjoy. There was a real buzz around the place with lots of birders walking the local area going to find different birds.
After a good chat with Justin and Neil at Swarovski we headed off with a pair of our 8x32 NL Pure bins in tow, the perfect binoculars to take on a walk. The clarity and colour rendition paired with the more compact nature of the 32mm suit my hands perfectly and reducing the objective lens to the 32mm vs the 42mm really helps to reduce the weight. We headed down the lanes briefly visiting the beach to snap some shots of the new Swarovski STC. (What a piece of kit, keep an eye out for our review of that soon)
We found a couple of House Martin nests with youngsters just itching to fledge. After watching them feed for a few minutes we carried on our walk towards the discovery centre seeing Wheatear and Spotted Fly Catcher on the way until we came to the the Canal Scrape Hide where we sat for a while watching Mallards and a very cute young Little Grebe whilst in the background a coot chased a moorhen, imagine Benny Hill music here. Another coffee (this time decaf) and a slice of the discovery centre’s finest cakes we headed back to the fields of the festival.
The walk back gave us a real flavour of the local wildlife with dragonflies, butterflies and bees all buzzing round the local wildflowers and a great chance to reflect on my first Migfest. The atmosphere around Spurn was amazing with everyone saying hi, chatting about birds and wildlife as well as climate and sustainability. Now I think I understand the buzz, it crossed my mind that some of these species of birds that we see have travelled from far and wide to spend the winter here in the UK and I think that’s a BIG deal!
Paul Longley (Titch)