Spring tides return

Another mild night and day, with light breeze, mainly from south. Light rain pretty much all day.

Saltmarsh area

Today's high water at 8.9m was the first tide to reach the marsh for 12 day's, although it far from covers it, these first of a set of spring tides tend to produce the maximum numbers of Common Snipe:

Common Snipe 42

Jack Snipe 2 possibly 3

Not all the snipe were flushed by today's tide.
You can just make out two Common in the centre of this shot.
I expect there were more, and almost certainly more Jacks.

Reed Bunting 1 male calling 

The Grey Seal was feeding near the outflows again

Picture by Kevin

Heysham skeer

Just a quick, distant check on the ebbing tide as the corner was just becoming exposed. No sign of any Brent geese.

Goldeneye 1 male

Bar-Tailed Godwit 3

I suspected yesterday that today's rain would restrict my camera use today, so I saved a few video clips for today.

They all fall under the category of - Diving displays:

First up - singles - the nose dive......

Goldeneye out from Heysham Head, viewed from the skeer

Not bad, but a slight ripple

Grey seal in No.2 outflow on the south sea wall

Not a sign of a ripple.

Second up - synchronised diving

Eider feeding in the first channel - Heysham skeer

Mmm... a tad more practice required

Cormorants feeding by the wooden jetty on the south sea wall

Almost nailed it, but there is always one that gets the timing wrong!

The above was just a bit of fun, and took advantage of yesterday's dry, still conditions. But the point is that there is plenty to see locally, perhaps not rare, but it can be interesting, and you never know when a rarity is going to present itself.