The day started sunny with a light SE wind, but the wind shifted to SW and the cloud cover increased until rain started early evening. The winds are currently strengthening and still from WSW, but forecast to be WNW by morning, which isn't ideal for blowing stuff into the bay.
Just my morning check of the south shore so far (MD)
Skylark 1 calling around the saltmarsh - we often get one or more wintering here, but this is the first time, to my knowledge, this winter.
Pale-bellied Brent goose 50 on Red Nab - this clip, shows some of them feeding. Some of them in the water are finding decent sized clumps of weed, suggesting that it settles out of reach between the rock crevices when the tide is out. But it must also mean that the gut weed continues to grow throughout these mild winters.
Shelduck 36
Rock Pipit 3 (1 Red Nab, 1 waterfall and 1 at the lighthouse). This is the lighthouse bird, not the ringed male breeding bird, but this one did visit the nest site, so I presume it was the female checking things out. The nest site is a hole in the the harbour wall, directly below this bird. You can tell it wants to go and look, but they never visit the nest site, when they are aware of being watched. As soon as I looked away it flew down to the hole.
Shag 1 juvenile - the tide was still quite high and the waterfall well below the surface, so it was fishing along the south inner harbour wall. I watched from the lighthouse hoping to see what it might catch, but all I got were a series of their distinctive dives (their body clears the water in the initial leap).so I strung a few together, don't know why, they all look exactly the same!
I was going to say, hopefully more tomorrow. But I'm not overly optimistic, we'll see.....
