Teesmouth Bird Club

Love the diagnostic whopping big yellow bit on the bill - no mistaking this fella!

Welcome on board Eddie - should be a great time to be in the Baltic with lots of stuff moving up to northern breeding areas.
Cheers,
Steve Duke (Marske/Redcar patch-watcher)

Nice comparison pics, Ian.  A lesson for anyone who makes the mistake of assuming size alone can diagnose a GND!
Steve

Bridie,
If you're near Redcar / New Marske, try walking up Green Lane (OS 462043, 522716) up to Errington Wood above New Marske (OS 462500, 520500) and round the edge of the wood around dusk.  Or just walk round the wood perimeter (there's a car park at OS 461800, 520200). Nowhere near guaranteed for a sighting, but the best I know around me.
All the best,
Steve

I'd go Water Pipit - in my experience the super is not as pronounced on some birds as others.  If you bring up the Bird Guides Online photos and browse through a load of them, many are identical to your bird.  And don't your legs look dark?

This year there have been a lot of Bar-tails at the RSPB reserve, sometimes very close, e.g. on the Bottom Tank, and there's always nice people who are real experts who will help you out if you're unsure.
Cheers,
Steve

Forgot Reds. Anywhere along road into Danby after turning off the A171 Whitby-Guisborough road. Stand on Danby beacon (map ref 473500,509500) and you should see plenty after shooting season finished at end of December. In spring the males are very active and unmissable.

Six years in a row have seen them lecking at Langdon Beck, watched from the unclassified road, just past the cattle grid marked on the OS map 200yds west of this ref: 385500,532500.
Good luck,
Steve

For £100 or so I don't think you can do better than the many and varied Chinese optics you can find all over the internet.  OK, they're not Swarowski, but from what I've seen have the same quality as bins which are at least twice the price.
Cheers,
Steve

I think the call is very distinctive when you get to know it - but there's the trick!  All the internet and CD facilities are good.  P-Fs really are audibly different from Greylags, Canadas and Beans (and I don't think you're going to get too bothered by Barnacles and White-fronts).  I think all the big skeins in our area are all Pink-feet, but we could have a weird year!  Watch out for odd singletons: had a Pink-foot very very close in off Marske a week ago, swimming in the sea, before flying off who knows where.
Cheers,
Steve
PS Damian Money gets a lot over his place - - contact him over IDs - if you're in Saltburn he's close by.

Ted, as always, you're so right.  If this has to be done according to biologists and ecologists best advice ,let's do it humanely as poss, with professionals, not incompetents.  And not in this cavalier way with no respect for us birders and the public who are out and about in the countryside.
Steve

On the cooler weather point, a friend of mine says N. Majorca is at its best in May. You get fine, warm weather, the fantastic wild flowers are all out (rather than parched), the birds are breeding so they're very active and visible (and some better locatable by songs).  Problem if you're tied to school holidays, but I think Whitsun would be great.

Ah yes...thanks Eric. I feel a bit silly as I hadn't thought of racing pigeons actually racing home! That would explain why they're flying so purposefully and obviously heading out of the area as fast as they can.  And, like you say, we know lots of birds use the coastline to aid their other methods of migration navigation.
Cheers,
Steve

Simon,
Thanks for reminding me of how fantastic northern Majorca is for a holiday.  Went ten years ago to Cala San Vicente, near to Puerta Pollenca.  Can't believe you can have the Boquer valley, the Albufeira reserve, Cap Formentor all within a few miles of each other AND watch heavy-duty raptors from a supermarket car park just outside Cala S.V.  Increased my list by I don't know how much and managed to hook a niece on the delights of birding and she's now a real expert and married to one of Britain's top bird photographers - managed to show her Hoopoe, Woodchat Shrike, Gallinule, Audouin's all in an afternoon. Osprey flapped lazily past our house on the coast every day.  Best two weeks birding of my life, but no Griffons in my day!  I could watch Eleonoras all day.
Cheers,
Steve Duke

Do Feral Pigeons migrate like 'normal birds', as opposed to just hanging around a given area in a sedentary way?  I ask because a few times recently I have seen several flights of 10 - 20 birds heading purposefully northwards over the sea off Marske.  They are quite a way out and are obviously quite different and behaving differently from the pigeon-loft / allotment birds which zoom around in similar-sized flights in our area.  Do the Skinningrove sea-watchers see them as well moving up the coast?