Holiday in Danby – August 2017

 We were up at our family cottage in Danby in the middle part of August. This is not the best time for bird watching on the moors which are much more productive in the Spring when the Curlew and Golden Plover as well as many Lapwings, Meadow Pipits and Grouse are nesting.
Yet again, we did not go on this trip to the cliffs at Bempton as we had been earlier in the year on a separate trip and by mid August the Puffins have already mostly left the cliffs.
As a result, our bird watching was principally confined to simply those birds we saw as we walked or drove locally through the  lanes and also those seabirds we saw such as Sandwich Terns, Gannets and Fulmar off the cost at Sandsend and Red Grouse on the Moors themselves.

The wonderful photo I have taken of a pair of Grouse was taken at the dale end of Little Fryup about a mile away from our cottage.

The only trip we made principally to look for birds was to Teesmouth. We love this location for its bleak diversity. It is approached by a single track road from run down Redcar close by the closed again elderly steel works on your left. This opens up with views on the left overlooking the River Tees , the nuclear power station on the far bank and the docks and thus an admixed past and current industrial landscape. However looking to the right of the river mouth and a huge beach and sand dune area sweeps round the bay past Redcar and on to Saltburn and Marske – now also the home of a large offshore wind farm. This beach was used in the very early years after the First World War for land speed record attempts until the speeds passed 150mph and the run became too short with a new venue at Pendine Sands in South Wales taking over. (My husband father remembered as a school boy in Saltburn watching Sir Malcolm Campbell driving his monster car off the sands after one of the record attempts.)
Teesmouth can be very variable and often one hardly sees a thing. This time, however, there was a good deal of activity with Common Terns and a good cross section of waders such as Ringed Plover, Turnstone, Oyster Catchers, Dunlin, Redshank etc. On the Tees estuary itself were Cormorants and a sole Velvet Scoter.

The weather was turning and a squall brewing as the light worsened. In the ensuing gusty gloom, I was reminded just how well camouflaged Turnstones are as they blend into the stones and small rocks of the foreshore hunkered down against the weather.