Plastic puzzle, is a plastic problem

Warm, despite heavy showers in the morning, turning to steady rain in the afternoon. A light east breeze

Middleton Nature Reserve 

Report by Alan:

A modest catch of 20 birds from my ringing session today at Middleton included nine species of warbler.

Total catch: Singles of  Wren, Blue Tit, Lesser Whitethroat, Garden Warbler, Dunnock, Common Whitethroat & Cetti's Warbler.

Willow Warbler  2

Sedge Warbler  2

Chiffchaff  1 + 1 retrap

Great Tit  2

Blackcap  3

Reed Warbler  2

 

A Weasel scuttled across the roadway, and later a Roe Deer stood around on the road staring at me for at least fifteen minutes, apparently not too bothered by a human.

Heysham skear (Malcolm) 09:30 - 11:30

My walk timed to watch the inner skear being exposed by the ebbing tide.

Gulls 600+, but most were on the water some distance out, likely where a shoal of small fish were. The gulls need the fish to be disoriented from attack by larger fish for them to have any chance of catching one. They seemed to be anticipating such an attack.

There were c150 large gulls around the mussel beds, mainly Herring gulls. There were also more Black-Headed gulls than recently 40.

A juvenile and 3rd calendar year Mediterranean gull landed to see what the attraction was.

3cy Mediterranean gull 

The 3cy clearly wasn't impressed with what was on the menu and quickly headed off south, followed shortly afterwards by the juvenile 

The large gulls on the mussel beds are still finding small seed mussels. Seed mussels continue to arrive all through the summer, but are tightly packed between larger mussels in most areas. The inner skear has fewer large mussels so still provides a feeding opportunity.

The ringed Herring gull is N:04S. It was ringed at Bowland in 2023.
The gull on the right is holding a seed mussel the size they prefer.

Bizarrely, the only other ringed bird seen was the next in sequence N:05S
A reasonable chance that they are siblings, both have been seen here before
but not previously on the same day

This is N:05S feeding, I took the clip to show them eating seed mussels, and you can see that if you watch closely. But at the end of the clip it finds something other than a mussel

The problem with eating seed mussels is that they are just hard, shiny and
tasteless. As is a piece of plastic, or a pebble for that matter. Whatever criteria 
they use to identify seed mussels as food, thankfully this piece of plastic didn't qualify.

This juvenile Black-Headed gull looks to have something eel like

It is something eel like. It's an eel like strip of plastic, eventually discarded.
To be fair there isn't a lot of plastic on the skear, mainly as the strong currents
regularly purge the surface, but small pieces can and do remain in the crevices.
And there is an awful lot of plastic in the sea!

Eider just 1 male in eclipse 

Male Eider in eclipse 

No mergansers seen

Great Crested grebe 5

Oystercatcher 500

Curlew 80

Redshank 35

Turnstone 1

Dunlin 2 south

Turnstone 

Little Egret 2

This Little Egret looked odd flying with its legs apart......

.......but there was a reason. The lesson here is that if you see an Egret
flying overhead with its legs apart......put your hat on! Quickly!

The offshore wind was ideal for today's kite festival. Shame that it
rained for most of the afternoon