Good Knot day

A dry day with sunny spells. A light NE breeze.

South shore (Malcolm)

Just a quick check along the foreshore this morning. The only passerines seen from the saltmarsh to RedNab were one each, Robin, Wren and Dunnock.

Pink-Footed goose 218 south along the shipping lane

Shelduck 52

Wigeon 150

Heysham Skear.

Howard checked 3 hours after high water.

Pale-bellied Brent goose 3 initially on the sea then came inshore to feed on the sea lettuce exactly where it was photographed for yesterday's post.

Pale-bellied Brent geese

The Brent were still feeding there when I walked out towards low water (Malcolm).

Little Egret 8

Great Crested grebe 2

I'd gone to see if I could locate any flagged Knot. Initially there were c2,000, but the tides are getting higher now and a lot of inaccessible skear is available to them. 

Knot on the skear

It wasn't until the incoming tide pushed them back up, before I started locating flagged birds, all orange flags. Amazingly I ended up managing to find eight birds not seen here before this autumn. 

But even then, most of the legs were obscured for most of the time

But occasionally one would show well

By this time they had been joined by more Knot at least 2,500 now, including the melanistic bird. It seemed to appear out of nowhere, and it certainly seemed to be minding its own business. Most of the time it was resting at the edge of a group.

Melanistic (dark) Knot just left of centre

It just showed its head briefly here as some displaced birds were flying over.

By this time the sun was setting and the moon rising. The Knot were heading off, and I joined them.

I do love the sunsets here, shame they are so early at this time of year!

Waxing gibbous moon, telling us that we are rapidly moving to spring tides