Still RVD at Middleton and Glossy Ibis not far away

A dry and often sunny day. A west breeze

Middleton Nature Reserve 

This from Rosemary and Peter's visit yesterday 

Seen at the Southern Section:

Migrant or Southern Hawker 2 (they were too far away to get a definite ID)

Common Darters Ovipositing 3 pair

Lone Male Common Darter 8

Lone Female Common Darter 2

Speckled Wood 2

Heard at the Southern Section

Long Tailed Tits

Seen at the Main Pond

Red Veined Darter 1

Migrant or Southern Hawker 2 (again, they were too far away for a definite ID)

Common Darters Ovipositing 2 pair

Male Common Darter 6

Speckled Wood 1

Mute Swans 2

Mallard 4

Grey Heron 1

Heard at the Main Pond

Cettis Warbler

Robin

Immature Red-Veined Darter
(What a great, almost surreal, shot!)

Common Darters

Female Common Darter

The main pond Mute Swans

Janet checked today but was exercising a dog, so restricted to where she could go

Two Chiffchaff heard

Swallow 1 south

Pink-Footed geese 82

Pink Footed Geese flying south

Tufted Duck 2 on the main pond, the "no swimming" pond not checked.

Tufted Duck pair

Lots of Common Darters on the south side.
This one allowing a good comparison to the RVD shot above
Migrant Hawker also seen

Common Darter by the main pond

A flock of Long-Tailed Tits passed through 

This young Bullock keeps escaping from his field!!
He is ok and never bothers people or dogs.

Heysham skear - Malcolm 10:45 - 12:00

The tide had already been making for over an hour and was now coming in quickly 

Grey Heron 1

Little Egret 16

Little Egrets

Eider 6

Red-breasted Merganser 6

Red-breasted Mergansers

The bulk of the Oystercatchers had already moved to the waterline.This area is where
the Knot usually move to on the incoming tide, but there was only a handful today

Then c1000 Knot arrived from the north and settled here. But as soon as they did a Peregrine lifted them all again, and they continued south.

The tail end of the Knot flock heading south. You can see the Peregrine top right

There were probably 200 more Knot around the skear in small groups. Then another flock of c500 arrived from the north. So not too far short of 2000 Knot in total. The ones seen were mainly young birds and no flagged birds were seen.

Some of the late arriving Knot with Oystercatchers 

One of the Oystercatchers was colour coded.
This bird was ringed as a chick at Glen Clova Scotland in 2016. It has been
seen at Heysham several times since 2019, but unfortunately nowhere else

Bar-Tailed Godwit 2 

Dunlin 1

Redshank, more than recent at least 180

Other waders similar to recent

Bar-Tailed Godwit and Oystercatcher 

Dunlin

This Carrion Crow took umbrage at me and gave me a good cawing at!

Just out of the recording area  - Heaton Marsh - Malcolm

Pete had advised that there had been three Glossy Ibis seen along the tidal road over the last two days. So I called in while passing around high water this afternoon. I only managed one. These shots were taken about 50m along the road that goes to the Golden Ball, after you turn off the road from the bypass.

Most of the time it's head was down, making it look like a large Lapwing 

Glossy Ibis, although not a very glossy one

It flew off to the east, it will just about be above the Golden Ball in this shot 

Half way along the bypass between the Heaton roundabout and Imperial Rd roundabout, on the south side, there was a field where gulls were feeding.

Not a lot of gulls....

......but three of them were Mediterranean gulls