Courting disaster!

Another dry day with some sunny spells, till the evening rains started. Light SE wind.

A summary of this morning's sightings by the LDBWS event on Heysham Head from Andrew McCafferty:

Not much! But eventually we had one guillemot floating a little bit before flying I guess in an outwards direction (south and away anyway!), and several flocks of scoters which kind of milled around mainly fairly far out. We didn't properly count them, but I'd say probably around 100 in the end.

Apart from that there were a few sandwich terns hanging around as normal, but we didn't spot any Arctics going through. A whimbrel popped up and showed on a nearby rock, and we also had a female wheatear hanging about.

Nice morning out, but nothing earth shattering!

Heysham skear - low water 07:00 (MD)

I went down 90 minutes after low water as the tide was covering the skear. 

Pintail  3 males - came overland from the SE and settled briefly on the sea.

Male Pintail - not common in the recording area

Before continuing their flight NW

Apart from the Oystercatcher there were very few waders, just:

Turnstone 21 - many moulting to summer plumage 

Turnstone moving to summer plumage 

Dunlin 3

Redshank just a solitary bird.

Redshank with only feathers for company

This is what today's title refers to. The Sandwich Terns were feeding, in fact the females were being fed. The males were bringing them fish (whitebait). The females waited on rocks for their beau to return with his love offering to reinforce their bond. 

This male got it wrong (or he was chancing his wing) and went to the "wrong" female to begin with. She saw him off, he then went to his waiting mate. She took the fish then gave him a severe scolding.......not the desired reaction.

Next time he didn't wait for a reaction 

Before finally getting it right!