Godwits again

Just enough breeze to ruffle the sea again, mainly from NE. Plenty of sunshine in the morning.

Pale-bellied Brent geese - a quick check on both the north and south side feeding areas at high water (08:30) found none. The afternoon check of Heysham skear located 4 feeding quite a way up the beach from the SE skear corner. Another single bird on the water further out probably a different bird.

Pale-bellied Brent goose on western edge of skear, 
a bit unusual just seeing a lone bird.

South shore just after high water (MD)

Linnet 3 on saltmarsh 

Greenfinch 2 on Red Nab

Rock Pipit 1 along the sea wall and 1 between waterfall and lighthouse.

Shelduck c60 - this one appears to be drinking sea water, and indeed is drinking water from the sea, but this is just out from the foreshore and a surface water drain isn't far away. Even so the water will still be brackish.

Grey Plover 1 at the Red Nab end of the foreshore. They are not often seen here. It seems to find something to eat easily enough.

Peregrine Falcon 1. It came from over the Power Station and dived down to Red Nab, not a stoop but still very quick. It managed to grab a bird, but it managed to break free.

Peregrine with would be breakfast 

This is it just afterwards. It was soaring to gain height, the next attack would be faster, but the birds had already flown. I didn't see it attack again.

Kittiwake 2 - an adult plus a 2nd calendar year, feeding around the dredger that was operating in the outflows water intake area.

Two Kittiwake above the dredger

Their technique was to wait on the wall till they spotted a tit bit.

Heysham skear - low water 15:20 (MD)

Even less visible on the sea today

Great Crested Grebe 1

Red-breasted Merganser 2

Eider 3

Brent goose - see above

Shag 1 - an immature bird had been resting on a honeycomb worm reef, it must have already fed as it flew back towards the wooden jetty.

Immature Shag

Waders: Oystercatcher, Curlew, Redshank, Turnstone plus

Dunlin a few flying around

Knot c400

Bar-Tailed Godwit 110 at least (I managed a high count of 130, but couldn't be certain they were all Godwit). There were three flocks flying around. These are some of them, with some quite distinctive landmarks in the background.

Some of them landed just north of the green marker post, but they didn't stay long.

Just out of the recording area - Angela reported large numbers of Pink-Footed geese feeding in the fields adjacent to Oxcliffe Rd.