Misunderstood Meds

Sunny for most of day wind more northerly than recent, but from west.

Pete Crooks did a thorough check of the south shore on this morning's rising tide:

Heysham Stage 2 outfall 

1 juvenile Mediterranean Gull (flew off towards Wooden Pier and later seen off harbour mouth), 

3 Rock Pipit 

Heysham Wooden Pier 

40 Cormorant, 

10 Turnstone, 

1 Common Sandpiper, 

1 Sandwich Tern 

Red Nab (incoming tide) 

14 Mediterranean Gull (11 adults, 3 x 3rd CY), 

5 Whimbrel, 

1 Greenshank, 

1 colour-ringed Curlew (Red right above 'left knee', Dark ring with pale line / code above 'right knee'), 

1 juvenile Peregrine 

Beach near wooden jetty (MD)

Todays title refers to my misunderstanding regarding the Mediterranean gulls feeding yesterday. On Friday they were all easily catching sand mason worms, last night they were all either sat on rocks or beach. Not feeding, I presumed because they were full. I went down early this morning, expecting to see another feeding frenzy - at 06:00 the beach was deserted, no gull of any description was there. By 07:00 6 Meds had turned up, but no attempt at feeding. The sand mason worms could not have been available, and the Gulls knew in advance!

Dunlin - a nice flock of 28 summer plumaged adults did stop off to feed ( they were, and continued heading south)

Adult Med gull watching the Dunlin and Redshank feeding.

There was a family of five Linnet feeding on the wall where the solitary Rock Pipit normally sits.

After failing to chase them off, it skulked to a hole in the wall - This is not the nesting hole.

By evening it was a completely different story at 19:00 the beach was full of feeding gulls. All managing to catch some sand mason worms, albeit not as easily as Friday (this all needs some further Thought and observations). 

Mediterranean gull 40+ including 3 juvenile, 2 2cy. I didn't notice any 3cy, but there probably were some. There must be quite a turnover of Meds. There was a new darvic bird today and the previous two not seen.

A few of the remaining Meds + BHG as the tide cleared the last of them