The sun didn't break through the clouds till early afternoon, then remained sunny. A light east wind.
Heysham skear (MD)
Again, two quick checks today, one in the morning as the skear was being covered and again in the afternoon as it became exposed again.
Eider 2 female. One alone, the other with at least 8 small chicks. They weren't easy to count as even at this stage they are diving for food.
No sign of the young family in the afternoon Red-breasted Merganser pair
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| Red-breasted Merganser pair |
Great Crested Grebe 1
Litter Egret 3
There are still lots of Herring Gulls around (the original seed mussels are now much to large for them, but there are newer ones to be had), and a few Lesser Black-Backed, but there were also many more Black-Headed Gulls today, than of late. At least 40.
Oystercatcher <100
Curlew 8
Today's title sounds like an obscure festival created by greeting card manufacturers, but is just a statements on the lack of any sightings or reports of Sanderling today........Happy Sanderlingless
Someone was busy overnight, rock balancing. I took these shots to display them, but also to show the stage of the skear when I went out this morning.
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| Rock balancer's art, with the skear behind. This was 09:00 The arrow points to the location of the smaller stack in the picture below |
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| Amazingly they all had avoided being toppled by 10:00 and this and the right hand one above were still standing at 18:00 |
Red Nab 1hr before high water (MD)
There were quite a lot of Black Headed Gulls here too c40
Herring and Lesser Black-Backed gulls 4 each
Common Gull 2 x 1st summer
Mediterranean Gull 1 adult.
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| Mediterranean Gull under the wing of a Black-Headed Gull |
Little Egret 2
Grey Heron 1
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| Grey Heron |
Oystercatcher c50
Curlew 2
Ringed Plover 1
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| Ringed Plover |
Last night's high water of 9.4m was the highest of this set of spring tides and should have filled the "pool" near the sea wall, but the high atmospheric pressure and offshore breeze obviously held it back.
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| Red Nab "pool" near the sea wall. The tides will not be high enough to reach here again till early July, so barring heavy rain it will remain an empty pool! |
Alison Hayward has kindly provided a detailed account and some photographs of the insects seen along the south sea wall, when she and Kevin Eaves checked on 29th May:
Lots of different groups represented
Large number of Rove beetles all seemed to be one of the Philonthus species.
2-Spot, 7-Spot, 11-Spot and 14 Spot Ladybirds all present.
4 Red Headed Cardinal Beetles and one Scarlet Lilly Beetle.
Several Stitona Lineatus weevils, and Alder Leaf Beetles also present and one each of Altica sp., Oulema duftschmidi/melanopus agg (Cereal Leaf Beetle), Harpalus sp. and Amara sp.
