A good seawatch, but a narrow window

A dry day after early morning showers. A light NE wind

Seawatch report Pete:

One to check the met situation today - after expecting absolutely nothing in the rain, the best concentrated seawatching of the spring so far 0640-0730 then the tap seemingly turned off 
Sea Heysham from 0625 (nothing of note until 0640):
Arctic tern: 122 inc flocks of 23,75
Arctic skua: 1 dark morph, 2 dark morph, 1 light morph, 1 light morph - the last very close 
Kittiwake: 37 in 5 high flying inbound small flocks - may have missed some 
Gannet: 5
Black Tern - flock of 4 with two Arctic
Common Tern 1,1 in
Sandwich Tern: at least 61 in 
Common Scoter: 60-70 distantly backwards and forwards 
Red throated diver: 1
Guillemot: 3 floating out

Heysham to 0835: died off with the only additions: 

2 inbound Common Tern,

13 inbound Sandwich Tern

1 guillemot floating out 

a brief appearance by the 2Cy Shag.  

Swallow about 150/hr till 0815

A more detailed description of today's seawatch can be seen on Pete's Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/100043676024219/posts/1675255147273670/?mibextid=wwXIfr&rdid=cnky7uPU73yw10HP

Heysham skear - Malcolm 08:45 - 10:00

Eider - just one male seen

Arctic Tern 2 in at 09:10

Arctic Tern

Sandwich Tern, at least 4 fishing/resting

Sandwich Tern

Little Egret 3
Curlew 1

Whimbrel 2

Bar-Tailed Godwit 12

Some of the Godwit coming in to land on the waterline
That's the "wooden jetty" behind

Bar-Tailed Godwit 

Turnstone 21 together

Turnstone in varying degrees of moult to summer plumage 

They flew off to the north

Dunlin 3 north

Ringed Plover 5 high up the shore 

Ringed Plover, a little easier to spot than yesterday's birds

Swallows were still coming in, but not as frequent as earlier, c 15/hr

Middleton Nature Reserve 

This from Janet:

Jo Bailey went to check the nest as the female hadn't been near for days (Jo's picture below). I wonder if the eggs were broke after the Cygnet had that fight with the female a few weeks back, where they fought on the nest.

South shore

Kevin Eaves had a walk along the sea wall

Painted Lady, Red Admiral also seen

A couple of impressive spiders on the wall today.

A Zebra Spider with prey much larger than itself.
Despite being arachnophobic these spiders don't bother me at all
and I could easily pick them up. 

The same can't be said of the Noble False Widow which really spooked me. It took all my courage
to place my finger so close. They have a painful bite though it's not generally harmful to humans.
I wasn't going to test it though!