More ringing news

Heysham narrowly avoided the snow, but overnight rain continued for much of the morning, driven by a quite fresh east wind.

Grey Wagtail colour ringed sighting

Grey Wagtail
ALL7507/LMGY	1st W	16/09/2020	Middleton NR
	Photo	01/02/2021	Gravel Lane, Banks,  Southport, N Merseyside	41km SSW

Thanks to Wes Davies for the picture 

One of the more interesting recent Knot histories below, but we haven't got details yet for the completely new ones in the 20-odd read in the last three days. 

CU	Ringed	Mårnes, Porsanger, NORWAY 70 24N 25 32E	21/05/2019
7503799	Seen	De Richel, NETHERLANDS 53 17N 5 08E	03/09/2019
	Seen	Heysham old Heliport	11/01/2020
	Photo	Heysham old Heliport	01/02/2021

The following pictures are some of Howard's, as ever, with high resolution images, best opened to view the detail. These show examples of the types of ringing formats used.

Oystercatcher
FH24731/S85	Pull 1/2	12/06/2012	Old Machar Academy, Aberdeen
	Seen	March 2017	Aberdeen area
	Photo	30/01/2021	Heysham old Heliport	349km SSW

Heysham skeer - low water 08:50 (MD)

It was a wet walk out to the first channel, fortunately the wind to my back, for little reward.

Knot c500 - more probably beyond the first channel on the outer skeer.

Eider c50, but again probably more in the, out of sight from here, Kent channel

Red-breasted Merganser 7 - 6 feeding on the south side of first channel

Fortunately the rain eased slightly on the way back, but the going was difficult with the honeycomb worm colonies. These are getting quite high and awkward to traverse, particularly on the north side, which is the side I prefer to walk back along to check the "lake" to the north of the skeer.

The north edge of the skeer has larger colonies, because it is the south side that takes the brunt of the SW storms.

I know I have shown similar images to these in the past, but it gives a flavour of how fauna dominance of the skeer waxes and wanes, it will be interesting to see what happens this spring/summer.

This is a shot of the north side of the middle skeer. Normally, or perhaps previously, at this time of year this area would have been scoured clean of any remaining mussels by the winter storms, exposing the stone skeer bottom.

This one is about a metre high, but they have sustained storm damage and some are breaking up, that's one of the reasons that they are difficult to traverse. If you look closely, there are two or three pockets that are protecting mature mussels. When the seed mussels start forming in late spring the smaller pockets will also be ideal for them, unfortunately a honeycomb worm colony is a dynamic structure and could easily engulf them before they really get started, but I don't know.

This is a detail of a section that has broken away, it must have happened in the last tide, otherwise the delicate tracery of the thinner tubes would have been eroded. You can see the tubes of various thicknesses, but of equal length, they all need to open on the edge or top of the colony (the out of focus spots are just rain drops). Note the Auger Shell bottom left, not a common shell on the shoreline here.

Middleton Nature Reserve 

Just a quick check of the "no swimming" pond on my way home

Gadwall 10

Shoveler 2

Tufted 1 male

Didn't see the Little grebe today.