A welcome influx of Meds

A warm sunny day with a light west wind.

South shore (Malcolm)

A morning check as the rising tide approached Red Nab

Sandwich Tern at least 3 adults

Sandwich Tern with quite a large Whitebait.
Not scavenged from the outflows but caught in open water.

Two Sandwich Terns resting on the mud with the gulls

Things looked promising, there were loads of small gulls around including at least 17 Mediterranean gulls,  but just as they were settling on Red Nab a loud steam blow off from the Power Station spooked them and they resettled on mud out from the foreshore, but unfortunately spooked again by a dog enjoying its holidays. I only managed to spot one green ringed 3rd calendar year and that was the French ringed bird seen earlier this month.

French ringed 3cy Med

Take a close look at this one. The gull behind has just ejected a pellet.
There is a line of spittle defining its trajectory 

This is where the gulls ended up this morning, unfortunately 
I didn't have time to check them out.......

.........so I returned early evening.

There were three groups of gulls resting on the mud, this was the largest

There were at least 30 Mediterranean gulls in the three groups. Unfortunately the tide hasn't reached this far for a week and the mud was dry, so most of the gulls were sitting for most of the time, but eventually I managed to read 5 new birds for this year, although they were all seen here last year too. Hopefully at least some will have been seen elsewhere since.

This is a German ringed bird

Middleton Nature Reserve (Janet)

Female/immature Reed Bunting

Male Reed Bunting 

Swallow

Pair of Black-Tailed Skimmers

Pair of Common Blue Damselflies 

Excellent sequence of a male Emperor

Female Emperor ovipositoring 

It isn't clear what has attracted the male Common Blue damselflies 
Janet though they may have been after her eggs. Perhaps so.