Knot......a good day at the office!

A light, mainly NW wind. Overcast with the occasional light shower.

Kittiwake - 5 resting on their pipe in the harbour yesterday - ref Kevin

Heysham Nature Reserve (MD)

A pleasant stroll around mid morning, nothing spectacular, but plenty to see:

Blackbirds 10+

Song Thrush 2 singing

Long-Tailed, Great and Blue Tits in good numbers

Goldfinch c30 , Greenfinch c10 and Bullfinch 8 - no Chaffinch of Siskin seen or heard.

These Goldfinch are feeding on the Alder cones - Song Thrush singing in the background 

This is a male and two female Bullfinch feeding on the swelling buds.

Male Bullfinch

Just a few each Robin, Dunnock, Wren

A lot of Magpies, there seemed to be 8 bickering plus another 4 trying to go about their business. Carrion Crow 2

Wood Pigeon 6

Moorhen 2

Sparrowhawk  inevitability 1

Roebuck 1 young male - he had a good look at me before deciding that I wasn't to be trusted.

So, plenty of wildlife to enjoy here, even through there was also a children's nature day in progress.

A little later Jean did some ringing here, this is her report:

I did a bit of ringing today. Yet more Bullfinches. Nine different ones have been caught recently (11th, 14th and 22 Feb)

Today's haul from 11:55 to 13:50:

Goldfinch 7 (only one retrap)

Bullfinch 4 (two retraps)

Long-tailed Tit 6 (3 retraps)

Blue Tit 5 (3 retraps including one from 2019 and one from 2021 originally ringed at Middleton NR)

Imperial Rd (MD)

Just a quick look in passing late morning

Buzzard 1 - heard only, it must have been on the far side of the trees

Teal 21 - these are some of them - not an overly informative clip as far as the Teal goes, but it does give a good idea of the terrain west of Imperial Rd.

Common Snipe 2 flying around

Stock Dove 2 flew north

Jackdaw 65 feeding on a small area of higher ground. A lot of the lower land is waterlogged, perhaps the invertebrates have moved up.

Heliport 

At 10.3m today's high water is the highest it will be till September. Howard was there to try and read any colour ringed Knot. He managed to read an astonishing 22 birds! It will take him a while to go through his many pictures.

Just out of the recording area

Mark Jones watched the tide cover the marsh grass near his caravan just south of the recording area. Four Skylark were flushed. This one deciding to sing.

I really miss them singing in the recording area, they used to provide an almost constant background music!