It's a real effort to know what day it is at the moment! Steady warm breeze from the east and wall to wall sunshine again.
Early am
All the migration known about today was early morning with 61 Arctic Tern heading in past Rossall at 0610 unlikely to be the same as the 55 heading out off the Stone Jetty at or before 0630. Two Poms heading in at Rossall at 0610 were already high in the sky and probably didnt go over/past us. A reminder that we have a bit of early morning tide now
Stone Jetty 6:20-8:30 by Nick
Common scoter 3 in
Arctic tern 3 and 36 out early on, later 16 in passing just a few metres from the end of the Jetty.
Sandwich tern 3
Cormorant 4 included one that caught a medium sized eel
Canada goose 229 N in 9 flocks
Whimbrel 2
Sanderling 17
Oystercatcher 350
Canada Geese - two reports, one of three lots over Heysham yesterday. These will be in addition to 229 seen by Nick
Middleton Nature Reserve early morning
Mute 22 plus resident pair on main pond. Pair plus 4 chicks on the "no swimming" pond.
Greylag goose 2 on main pond
Coot 3
Moorhen 4
Gadwall 2 male
Mallard 4
Warblers:
All nine resident males heard singing including Cetti's and Grasshopper
Emperor dragonfly seen in afternoon. First report this year - ref Janet
Lighthouse area
This was briefly checked three times for migrating insects in the east wind. Just Common Blue and Small White butterflies plus Cinnabar and Mother Shipton moths identified. But Kevin did manage a glimpse of a dragonfly flying into Power Station grounds.
Rock pipits - early afternoon (MD)
No food seen taken to nest, but one adult was seen above nest with a particularly large crane fly. I suspect it was going to use it to lure one of the young out. Unfortunately three walkers invaded its space, so it ate the crane fly and flew off.
On return early evening, there was just one adult feeding itself near lighthouse plus the third adult near waterfall. I suspect the young had flown. I'll check the whole area in the morning, and hopefully locate any juveniles that made it.
