I went for my first trip of the year to Spurn yesterday. I was tempted to travel further afield in the hope of seeing one of the recently reported rarities (male citrine wagtail in Northumberland for example) but my loyalty to Spurn won over-it never lets me down!

I was on the road for 5.30, a little frost on the windscreen and a distinct chill in the air.

The sun had already risen when I arrived-the sunrise was fortunately quite unremarkable.

I had seen that there was a couple of black redstarts at the point so headed off in that direction. Just at the start of the breached I flushed a small falcon and it was instantly recognisable as a merlin. It flew high east and I thought that would be the last I would see of that. The tide was low so very few waders around and surprisingly little over the onwards I trudged.

About three quarters of the way across I saw the small outline of a falcon on a log and lo and behold it was the merlin again.

I approached slowly and it was happy to let me photograph it at a reasonable distance. It then moved up towards the high tide line. It was here that I was able to align the lighthouse in the background and get a few shots which are below. On thinking about it after the even I should have tried to get a deeper depth to some of my photos to try to get the lighthouse into better focus, however I was happy with these. I looked at the photos on the back of the camera, then looked up to see that the merlin had taken flight and was heading back north. At this point the radio crackled and I was fortunete enough to get a sight of two barnacle gees flying south and a single swallow slid by hugging the ground as it battled against the wind.

I carried on towards the point hoping for a few spring migrants, however it was very quiet with only linnets, meadow pipits and quite a few crows overhead for company.

As I arrived at the point, the black redstart wasn’t immediately on view. I walked to the gun emplacement and heard the unmistakeable sound of a cettis warbler piercing the otherwise quiet air. I decided against looking for it and doubled back to the RNLI buildings. I heard an unusual song as I walked around the parede ground and then noticed the black redstart singing from the corner of one of the buildings.

I was quite mobile hunting insects in the warm sunshine. I left it to it after around half an hour and made my way back. The walk back was rather uneventful save for a few more waders and brent geese pushed in by the incoming tide.

All-in-all a very nice trip-the highlight being the merlin but just nice to get back to Spurn twas a bit like catching up with an old friend.