A nice day to watch birds

A heavy overnight frost followed by a sunny day. Once again becoming quite warm in the afternoon. A light east breeze.

Heysham Skear (Malcolm)

I checked in the morning on the ebbing tide.

There were no Brent Geese.

Pink-Footed goose 82 south

Eider 60

Oystercatcher 2,000

Curlew 40

Redshank 150

Knot 1,000

Dunlin 60

Turnstone 25

Curlew, Oystercatcher, Knot and Dunlin

These Knot are feeding on small invertebrates in the shallow water. One has an orange flag, it turned out to be one of two new flagged birds seen today. The flag is visible in parts of this clip.

I returned for a quick look in the afternoon as the tide was covering the skear.

A flock of 50 Turnstone with some Dunlin arrived from the south. These are in addition to the 25 feeding birds.

Turnstone and Dunlin

It became quite crowded as the tide rose.

Pale-bellied Brent geese 38

Brent geese arriving from the north

They ended up feeding just out from the Sunnyslopes groyne. Pickings are slim here, but they were finding the odd scrap of weed.

Red-breasted Merganser 3

Great Crested grebe 2

The Knot had disappeared from the skear, but 400 returned from the south to roost on the rocks below the groyne.

Knot in front of Sunnyslopes groyne. They were very flighty and were 
lifted three times by passing crows.

Just out of the recording area. Just the darker Stonechat seen/reported from the Sunnyslopes sea defences.