It's getting colder!

Light rain for most of the morning, but a dry afternoon ending in sunshine. Quite a fresh NE wind.

Pete had a look around this morning:

3 pair shoveler Middleton main pond and 3 Reed bunting on feeder.  

No pink footed or greylag geese in any of fields or saltmarsh oxcliffe/heaton/heysham moss and therefore no whitefront 

Heysham skear - Malcolm 13:00 - 14:30

The NE wind was bitter, there was fresh snow on the Lakeland hills

It looked to be quite deep snow to the north

Less deep closer to home

Pale-bellied Brent goose 24 - 2 to the west of the skear and 22 in the middle of the skear, but I suspect these had been flushed from the play area rocks.

Some of the Brent in the middle of the skear, there is precious little
for them to eat here

Brent out from the skear

Eider 1 pair

The Knot were quite interesting, their feeding habits are becoming more diverse. Initially there were just 50 feeding on the mud shore to the south of the skear. Fortunately these included one flagged bird, although it has been a "regular" here this winter.

It has one of the small bivalves that they were probing the mud for

Then another 250 arrived and also began feeding on the mud. Unfortunately none of these were flagged.

Some of the Knot electing to feed on the mud. At least it is easy to check
them for flags when the mud is flat like this

Although they were primarily searching for bivalves, there were other items on the menu. This one finds a tiny crab, bivalves can't be shared, but a crab can, potentially eight ways! It dashes off to eat it in isolation, but it was a vain hope!

This one managed to have its crab and eat it!

I also saw several Knot swallowing filaments of gutweed. This is always available in the quantities that they eat, but they don't always eat it. Presumably, it is required as a supplement for some diets.

Knot eating gutweed

Not all the Knot were feeding on the mud, there were another 200 scattered around the skear. Not so easy to check for flags there, but I did manage to spot two new ones for this winter. 

Dunlin 60

Dunlin

This Bar-Tailed Godwit was on the south shore on Wednesday, we have just received 
its updated History, it's a veteran! Ringed on Schiermonnikoog Island north Netherlands
In 2001. The last report for one of the others ringed at the same time was  in 2009!
It was also seen at Heysham last January.