Black-headed Bunting, Flamborough Head

Photo: Black-headed bunting Flamborough Head.

My first holiday abroad was in May 1985 to the resort of Hanioti on the Halkidiki peninsula in North East Greece. It was a birding holiday and we arrived at our hotel in the middle of the night. The following morning we were up at dawn and virtually the first bird we saw when we opened the curtains was a stunning male black-headed bunting. I was hooked! Talk about first impressions, I can't think of a better way to have started my overseas birding adventures and the image of that bird has stuck with me ever since. Whenever I hear mention of black-headed bunting it always takes me back to that moment in Greece in 1985.

Also from that hotel balcony on that first morning we saw red-rumped swallows, cirl buntings, hoopoes, rock sparrows, golden oriole and lesser grey, red-backed and woodchat shrike. In scrub near the hotel we saw many species of butterfly including Queen of Spain fritillary, Southern white admiral and scarce swallowtail. Reptiles included snub-nosed viper, Hermann's tortoise and various lizards. I have lots of happy memories from that holiday and they all come flooding back when I think about black-headed buntings.

Thanks goodness then that my first in the UK did nothing to spoil the memory!

Old Fall at Flamborough Head is famous in birding circles for the many rarities which have been found there, but in reality for me it's usually been the scene of many a birding disappointment, in fact as far as I can recall the best bird I had ever seen at Old Fall prior to this weekend was Pallas's warbler.

However, news that a male black-headed bunting had been found at Old Fall on Friday piqued my interest. Unfortunately though the weather on Saturday was forecast to be persistent heavy rain all day. Even though the bad weather meant that the bird would probably not leave and would probably be present all day on Saturday, I just couldn't face seeing a black-headed bunting in heavy rain at Flamborough Head, so I decided to risk it and go on Sunday when the forecast was much better.

We arrived at Old Fall at about 8:30 to be greeted with the good news that the bird was still present. We walked down the footpath along the side of the hedgerow which leads to Old Fall Plantation and the bird was in the first hedge on the right. It was a beautiful sunny morning with bright blue skies and the bunting was showing well, I estimate down to about 30m. What a beautiful bird it was, a stunning male with bright yellow underparts, reddish-brown upperparts and of course a black head, in no way compromising my previous memories, in fact if anything enhancing them. We watched it for a while and then headed off to see some of the other birds which were on offer.

Flamborough Head is a beautiful place, the cliffs here are lower than at nearby Bempton Cliffs and it doesn't have quite the breeding seabird spectacle, yet even so all of the species at Bempton can be seen here and most breed, albeit in much smaller numbers.

On the same day that the black-headed bunting was found, a female subalpine warbler was also found in scrub on the edge of the golf course. It was rather skulking but after a wait of an hour or so we managed to get brief but decent enough views of the bird. While we waited we were entertained by  two adult lesser whitethroats feeding recently fledged young.