Versatile Sanderlings and another nice moth

Very light west breeze all day with hazy sunshine.

Heysham skear (MD)

Two checks today, the first just after low water and again just as the skear was becoming exposed on the ebb tide. Totals are the highest count of the two visits:

Canada goose 12 in the far channel in the morning - this is the time of year when we get passage of birds on their moult migration.

Sandwich Tern 1 feeding in the evening.

Eider 9

Great Crested Grebe 13 (2 pairs displaying)

Red-breasted Merganser 3

Curlew 9

Whimbrel 1

Dunlin 1

Turnstone c20

Watch the bird on the left, it picks up three honeycomb worms in quick succession, from just below the silt. The force of the ebbing tide here is very strong and presumably had destroyed a section of honeycomb. The worms would have built new protective tubes, if they had escaped detection.

Sanderling at least 250

These are some of the morning birds feeding on the "sand" for a change. They are extremely mobile, partly because the tide is coming in quickly.

It was a different story in the evening as the tide was ebbing. Once again, the tide is going out so quickly it was leaving shrimps in the shallow water. Quite a few of the Sanderling were catching them. This one misses the first shrimp, then drops the second before catching it again. Still, quite a reasonable sized reward for the effort.

This is a nice shot of the plumage detail 

You can't look this good without plenty of grooming

Some nice shots from Kevin:

One of the Rock Pipits.
It had just finished performing its display flight. Harbour entrance.

Great Black-Backed gulls on Red Nab
The female looks like she is "thinking of England"!

Another nice moth. An Alder Kitten.
 It has a scattered distribution over the Southern half of the UK:
 Lancashire being at the Northern limit of its range.