Great Northern Diver

Overnight gale force SW winds with rain of biblical proportions! Daylight saw the winds eased slightly with some extensive gaps between the very heavy showers.

Great Northern Diver - located from Stone Jetty by Dan Haywood at 12:30 and picked up as it flew out from Near Naze by Pete.

These excellent pictures from Dan

It doesn't look it, but these pictures were taken in the teeth of a gale!

Unfortunately embedding pictures into a blog degrades them slightly, to view the originals and access other information, Twitter users can follow ⁦@LDBWSnews⁩ 

Other sightings from Dan:

Five Great black-backed Gulls paused while flying out, not as I first thought for a rest (strong headwinds) but to attempt to catch one of the three Great Crested Grebes feeding offshore. 

An adult Kittiwake & Gannet 'in' 

Also from Pete:

Two redhead Goosander flew high to the north over OE/red nab/wooden Jetty 

Razorbill/Guillemot 2 distant out

Kittiwake 1 adult on outflows early pm.

South shore (MD)

Sandwich Tern - 1 first winter bird battled past the wooden jetty 10:20. 

A rubbish picture, but adequate to confirm a quite late record

Shag - 1 first winter bird out from the saltmarsh before flying west

Linnet c50

Common snipe 6

I left before the saltmash was fully covered, so no Jack Snipe