Winter certainly bit hard this week and we had temperatures down to at least -4 in Beverley, but undaunted we planned to spend another night at the caravan on Saturday.
We got to Kilnsea late morning and all was well with setting up until it was time to turn on the water-it was frozen solid.
We chose to stay for the afternoon and after a bit of Christmas lunch and mince pies I went out with the camera.
First stop was Crown and Anchor and the view from the roadside was pretty spectacular. The water on the Humber has frozen and then got pushed in by the tide. It made for a polar landscape and just looking over the edge out towards the Humber it was bitterly cold. there were hundreds of birds feeding mainly dunlin and knot but a few redshank, bar and black-tailed godwits as well as curlew and a few shellduck.
There was news of some waxwings in Easington and I had a drive out there for just the briefest of looks (there was no sign) before heading back to Kilnsea. There were a few whooper swans in fields outside kilnsea and on the fields near grange farm golden plover and lapwing were feeding close to the road. I used the car as a hide to get some close views and they were joined briefly by a black-tailed godwit.
There were some big flocks of winter thrushes, mainly redwing and fieldfare feeding on the hawthorn berries and periodically taking flight as they were disturbed or moving on to the next clump of bushes.
I made my way to Kilnsea Wetlands but there was nothing in view-the water must be frozen solid.
A barn owl hunting in the south east corner had me hurrying to the screen closer to the bank and thankfully it put on a very nice show catching at least one field vole although it was being hassled by a kestrel so I’m not sure if it actually devoured its catch.
There were lots of redwings in listening dish hedge as well as a couple of yellowhammers.
Beacon Ponds was almost frozen solid but there was a big flock of wildfowl on Holderness Field that included mainly brent geese and wigeon.
I went back to Crown and Anchor for sunset, however grey clud mostly obscured the sunset and there was only a small amount of orange light.
On the mamal front, a few roe deer were around as well as a single hare. A fox darted into the dish as I made my way back to the van.
It was a fantastic afternoon, the undoubted star of the show was the barn owl but there was still plenty of other stuff to see and photograph.
The temperature never rose above 1 degree and unsurprisingly there weren’t many people around. Winter is my favourite time for photography and it was a pleasure to be out despite the freezing feel to the day.
