Almost no movement, including the air!

Calm to very light variable breeze. Sunshine for most of the morning, more cloud in the afternoon.

Heysham Head

Report from Tim

Went onto the Head just after 06.10

Plenty of Linnet overhead first thing, but most seemed to have moved elsewhere by 06.30

Nothing interesting in the woods 

3 silent Swans flew past from west 06.50

2 Brent arrived at playground from west 7.05

2 (or the same one twice) Rock Pipit below the cliff

2 Little Egret

One female Sparrowhawk (being mobbed by 10 or so finches)

Looking north:

Merganser 8

Eider 30+

GCG 2

Heysham Nature Reserve 

Ringing report from Jean:

It was very quiet this morning. Only 13 birds caught between 0730-1030 (retraps in brackets):
Chaffinch 1
Greenfinch 2
Lesser Redpoll 1
Goldfinch 2
Song Thrush 1
Dunnock 1
Great Tit 1 +(1)
Blue Tit 1 + (1)
Bullfinch (1)

Vis:
Only 5 Meadow Pipits, 3 Lesser Redpoll and 5 or so Chaffinches flew over in 3 hours.

Wigeon 14 on Red Nab

Heysham skear- low water 12:05 (MD)

Great Crested grebe 2

Red-breasted Merganser 9

Eider 180 close in, plus c50 feeding further out. When the Eider are close in like today, the skear reverberates with their display calls. But for some reason whenever I try to record, it seems underwhelming compared to how my ears perceive it, perhaps I'm just sensitive to the call frequency. Anyway, I had another go as the wind noise was minimal. You can just about hear their calls on this clip, but still not the all pervading sound that it seemed at the time.

Turnstone c150 - I took this clip to demonstrate just how good their current plumage acts as camouflage amongst the broken shells on the skear. You wouldn't notice the lower bird if it didn't move.

Knot c1,000 - this is some of them as the tide started to come in. Their feeding finished they were all clambering to bathe in the brackish water running off the shore. I have said it before, one thing all birds seem to have in common is that they all appear to relish a good bath!

Little Egret 4

Other waders, Oystercatcher, Redshank, Curlew and Dunlin.

Finally, it's green jelly blob season again!

For non regular or new post readers, these are the egg sacs of several species of green ragworm. They start by being attached by a tendril, as this one, but they quickly become dislodged and end up all over the beach. What always makes me smile is that if you Google "blobs of green jelly on the beach", it will tell you that they are called "green jelly blobs"! (MD).