Saturday 10 January 2009

Unorthodox coverage!

Heysham Obs
I was hoping the three car loads of birders seen coming back from the north harbour wall would produced the goods in that area - but not a peep on any info. lines. Otherwise the only available time had to be spent on the below survey 'tidy-up'.

SD45E January 10km square survey
Just 30 minutes allocated but it did produce a good bird in the context of the recording area this winter:

Stonechat - female in the reedy and rushy ground alongside the public footpath to the southern end of Ocean Edge from the Potts corner road
Twite - c22 Ocean Edge saltmarsh
Linnet - c4 Ocean Edge saltmarsh

Middleton Industrial est
All ponds still frozen
1 coot (unfrozen patch of dyke)
9 moorhen (open ground)
1 pinkfoot (low east - damaged wing)
1 snipe

Otherwise the survey was notable for large numbers of House Sparrow in Middleton village and the proliferation of Magpies compared to my usual survey in SD66! The lack of Greenfinches has been a theme in most of the survey work completed so far and this whistle stop tour of SD45E should have produced more than it did.

Elsewhere
The highlight was a female/imm Long-tailed Duck at Jenny Brown's Point at & just after high tide. 4 European White-fronted Geese and 4 Pinkfeet with 300+ Greylag at Claughton. 8 Whooper Swan Melling. Pair of Mandarin still at Kirkby. 5 Twite Bolton-le-Sands shore - the first in SD46 this winter - at least one was Heysham-ringed.