And, so it continues, hot, sunny and SW to W breeze.
South shore as tide was leaving the sea wall.
Large gulls juveniles - there were 25 between Red Nab and No.2 outflow plus another 7 between No.2 and No.1 outflow.
Rock Pipits 3. 2 together on Red Nab plus this one feeding on top of the sea wall near the lighthouse. It appeared to have turned vegetarian, but it must have been finding small invertebrates or possibly eggs in the sparse flora.
This is a still from the above clip, you can just make out a small morsel in its bill
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| Rock Pipit - Pete advises that it is a worn adult in moult. |
The Rock Pipit wasn't the only bird feeding like this, a young Linnet was too, and being watched over by dad.
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| Male Linnet |
Mediterranean gulls 5 - on this date last year, on a similar height tide, there were 40 Mediterranean gulls feeding on the beach next to the wooden jetty. Today I got there before the mud was exposed. These two 3rd calendar year birds were waiting for the sand mason worm beds to become available.
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| 3rd calendar year Mediterranean gulls |
Later they were joined by two adult and a third adult was making its way to the beach as I was walking back. It wasn't the unavailability of sand mason worms keeping the meds away, they seemed to be finding them easily enough. This 3cy catches a worm at the start of this clip.
Perhaps the sand mason worms have just started to become available, I'll have another look in the morning (MD)I couldn't work out what was "wrong" with this cormorant's bill. But it was only feathers, presumably after a good old preen.
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| Cormorant |
There were quite a few butterflies around the scrub near the lighthouse.
Meadow Brown 6
Gatekeeper 4
Common Blue 2
Small White 2
Small Tortoiseshell 1 (this seen to come in off the south wall)
Heysham skear - low water 14:00
Great Crested Grebe 1
Little Egret 4
Curlew c80
Turnstone 10 scattered around inner skear.
Redshank 81 - three lots 16, 3 & 62
Knot 6 partially summer plumage birds with the 62 Redshank. - I could see they were ready to move on so took this clip. Another Juvenile Oystercatcher was the last to leave (I did know that young birds have a white ring around the throat, I just hadn't realised how wide it can look - see yesterday's post).
This is still from this clip as they were taking off.
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| Knot in partial summer plumage |
The flock flew off overland to the east. I haven't pre compressed this picture, so if you open it you should be able to see enough detail to pick out the six Knot
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| Redshank plus six Knot crossing the shoreline before heading east overland |
Middleton Nature Reserve
Just a very brief check of the main pond mid afternoon
Only dragonflies were:
Emperor
Brown Hawker
Blak-Tailed Skimmer
Swift 2
House Martin 2
Swallow 4
Kevin has had some more top moths in his overnight light trap a couple of days ago. Scarce Silver Lines, scarce Footman the best. I'm just waiting for more details and the images, so I'll either add later, or put on tomorrow's post
