Friday 9 September 2011

No yellow tails, just legs

After all the excitement of the yellow wagtail influx yesterday, 9am this morning saw 2 birds and a wheatear. A chat with the guys at Birdguides revealed that it was the same picture across the country – just odd birds here and there. Not much appeared to be moving passerine-wise with the ringing team recording a few more blackcaps and a couple of late sedge warblers – details here.

Once again we had the usual mix on the marshes – 3 curlew sands still present all day, 2-3 ruff, and later 2 black tailed godwit and a snipe. Likewise, the resident black-necked grebe was still on D res with kingfishers showing well again on North Marsh. Marsh harrier was reported twice, and another stalwart – the osprey - was upsetting the gull roost this evening before dropping down somewhere over north marsh – distant pic here:

The gulls yielded the most new interest today – a big influx of great black backed gulls on the approach road numbering around 80 birds. On D res both yellow legged gull and mediterranean gulls dropped in seen by Les and Margaret. There are also still good counts of lesser black-backed gulls too – this individual in decoy fields:

With this 3rd winter:

My efforts to find a sabine’s gull were fruitless! However these two common sandpipers were on D wall collecting flies:




Finally Rory snapped this pic of the kingfisher attempting to move its own perch! We have since helped it by ensuring all perches are now optimally placed for best photographic ops: