A light SW wind all day. Showers till mid morning then just a few spots of rain in the afternoon.
"Seawatch" - Pete
Sea sampling heysham 0750 -0840: vis fine 0800-0820, otherwise rubbish:
2 gannet
1 red throated diver
6 common scoter
7 sandwich tern.
As expected no arctic tern.
I walked along the south sea wall starting 08:30 (Malcolm). Visibility was shocking through the fine rain. The showers were forecast as light, but as I walked out the only way you could describe it as light was that it wasn't dark! Fortunately by the time I had got back to Red Nab it was indeed just light, fine rain.
The heavier shower had grounded some birds though.
Common Sandpiper 2 - one along the sea wall and one on Red Nab, neither were seen on the way out.
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| Common Sandpiper |
Whimbrel 3 on Red Nab
Pale-bellied Brent goose 5 (again, not there on the way out, but their arrival more to do with the stage of the tide than the weather I think)
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| Pale-bellied Brent geese |
Wheatear 1 on foreshore
Linnet 4 on saltmarsh
Rock Pipit 1 on foreshore
Heysham skear - low water 15:50 (Malcolm)
Eider c70, Red-breasted Merganser 3 and Great Crested grebe 1
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| Eider being watched by Bar-Tailed Godwit |
Little Egret 10 - the SW wind bringing the small shrimps close inshore.
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| Little Egret |
Knot for most of my circuit I could only account for 50, then 1,500 appeared just as I was leaving.
Bar-Tailed Godwit several flocks around at least: 82, 3, 9, 70 and 33 = 197
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| Just a few of the Bar-Tailed Godwit |
Whimbrel 23 at least - they were scattered all around the skear, 13 was the most I could see at any one time, but there were almost certainly more. Then another 10 arrived together from the north.
This is just a short scan around a small section of skear, but it picks up 6 Whimbrel.
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| 10 Whimbrel coming in from the north side as the tide rose. |
No Curlew or Redshank seen
Turnstone 20
Dunlin 90 - the dunlin were flying around in small flocks, at lest three of which included....
Sanderling 13 minimum
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| Sanderling with Dunnock |
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| Sanderling just beginning to moult to summer plumage |
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| Sanderling, this one's moult more advanced, with Dunlin |
This one finds a small invertebrate
This is the largest group of 10 - 11 feeding with Turnstone, Dunlin and Knot. There were at least 2 + 1 with two other groups of Dunlin.
