Grey, grey, grey clouds and the wind really picking up from the south east, meant Marshside wasn't perhaps at its best today - but there were still a few bits and bobs around.
Numbers of Wigeon may be dropping slowly, but there's still a few thousand about, with good numbers of Blackwits and in with the Lapwings, a few Golden Plovers coming into summer plumage.
From the top of a very blustery Mount Baker, the outer marsh was quiet, with a few hundred Pink feet sheltering in the vegetation and a single Peregrine on the deck at the edge of the mudflats.
About 60 Pochard oon the Sandplant Lagoon, with Tufted Duck, Cormorant and Little Grebe, and five Stock Dove flew in with a flock of Woodpigeons to feed in front of the Sandgrounders hide briefly.
A shame the only time they had their heads up, was when a big fat Woody flew in front of them....
A Merlin was spooking everything up on Crossens and at least two Little Egrets were on the inner marsh.
The Water Rail had been strutting its stuff earlier on.
Another Peregrine launched itself from the Gasometer to tear out onto the estuary in about three minutes - not bad going....
The bottom of Marshside One had a good Redshank roost, a few gulls and more wildfowl, but I could do with this wind dropping if only for a day or two.
Eyes to the skies everyone, eyes to the skies...
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »
I've discovered an excellent Dutch website today which is really helpful for gull identification. It's in English and has many excellent photos of confusion species in all states of plumage, but especially juvenile/1st winters. Especially good section comparing Herring, Yellow-legged and Caspian in these plumages. Some of you may already know of it - but the address is www.xs4all.nl/~calidris/index.htm