A brisk east breeze till mid afternoon when it switched to NW. Sunshine all day.
Pete and Jean did a check at morning high water:
Mediterranean gull 1 adult still Red nab on its own,
no small waders Ocean Edge tideline today
Flock 12 immature Mute Swan on sea off heliport
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| Jean's shot of the immature Mute flock |
short seawatch north wall saw:
one Guillemot
one Sandwich Tern
and the first four Canada geese of their moult migration season
Just out of the recording area - Heysham Moss
Middleton Nature Reserve (MD)
Just a brief lunchtime check of the two main ponds
The Mute cygnets were getting a preening lesson.
Coot 3 adult one with quite a mature chick. This cip starts with the young bird, the adult is underwater, but the bubbles give the location away.
It might be quite a mature chick, but still deemed worth defending. Here the adult is seeing off a female Mallard.
Mallard 2 males and a female. No sign of the two families.
Swallow 2 and House Martin 4 feeding over the main pond.
Warblers:
Cetti's Warbler 2
Reed Warbler 1
Chiffchaff 2
Willow Warbler 1
Buzzard 3 - initially I thought it would be the breeding adults giving flying lessons, but two continued west while one, presumably one of the breeding adult, returned east to the breeding area.
Butterflies:
Brimstone 1 male
Large White 1
Small White 2
Common Blue 3
Burnet Companion moth several
Dragonflies:
Four-spotted Chaser several
Broad- bodied Chaser 2 male 1 female
Black-Tailed Skimmer several both male and female
Emperor 2 male
Common Darter 1
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| Immature Common Darter |
Heysham skear - low water 15:25 (MD)
Eider 5 (2 female)
Red-breasted Merganser pair
Little Egret 3
Oystercatcher c150
Bar-Tailed Godwit 1 flew south
Curlew 15
Dunlin 3 - they wouldn't move out of my way! I had to skirt round them. The developing mussels on the skear are an ideal background to camouflage their summer plumage. I haven't pre-sized the remaining shots in case you want to open them to check the summer plumage detail.
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| Two Dunlin, not three metres in front of me, but they refused to move. They didn't even stand up! |
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| This one reluctantly moved a little |
Sanderling 57 at least. The most I counted in the main group was 44, but there were always some out of sight behind rocks etc. there was another 2 near by and 11 feeding closer to the shore.
This is a clip of the largest group, you can see the problem with accurate counting.
When there are a lot together as above, there is always one more flighty than the others and when one flies, they all fly, so I didn't try to get any closer and left them in peace. In contrast the two together just watched me as I walked past just a few metres away.
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| Sanderling |
This shot is from the clip below. One of the 11 feeding further up the beach catches quite a large shrimp (for a Sanderling).
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| Sanderling with a shrimp |
This is the group of 11 feeding, early in the clip, the Sanderling with the shrimp quickly exits stage left, to make sure it can eat it in peace.
Janet had a walk around to see what dragonflies were about, but only managed to see Four-Spotted Chaser.
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| Brown Silver-Line moth |
