Nine warbler species on Middleton

A light west wind, with some south in it to begin with then more NW later. Mainly sunny.

To further qualify yesterday's comments regarding poor seawatching at Heysham. Walney had a good early morning seawatch yesterday 0600-0900hrs (eg 7 Arctic Skuas and puffins) but there was no water in the bay at that time and nothing happened from 1030 on as the tide started coming in!

Middleton Nature Reserve 

Janet had a walk around exercising a dog.

The Mute Swan pair had their young on display - 9. This is the same number as they hatched last year.

Some of the nine cygnets

Male Common Whitethroat 

A nice sequence of the swallows feeding......

.......and collecting nest building mud near Tradebe

Male Orange Tip

Immature male Azure Blue damselfly 

Common Blue Tail damselfly
All the above are high resolution shots, this is a particularly nice one, 
and definitely worth opening to appreciate 

Kevin Eaves had a walk around the reserve in the afternoon and managed to tick off eight warbler species singing. The ninth was not heard today, but yesterday Janet heard a Grasshopper Warbler singing, and it will still be around.

I didn't have much time today and just managed a short walk on the north shore towards low water (MD).

Eider, Great Crested Grebe and Red-breasted Merganser similar to yesterday.

The only waders, apart from Oystercatcher were Whimbrel 3, Ringed Plover 5, Turnstone 1

Turnstone - looking splendid in summer plumage 

Male Ringed Plover

Female Ringed Plover

Despite their bold markings they are well camouflaged in this terrain 
There are three Ringed Plover in this shot

The sea not really providing

A light south to SW wind. Occasional and short showers.

Seawatch report from Pete:

Arctic Skua 1 dark morph

Sandwich Tern 7

Grey seal 1 

All the above early on, nothing later on the rising tide.

Heysham Skear - low water 09:45 (MD)

Shelduck 7 south

Eider 53

Great Crested Grebe 7

Red-breasted Merganser 3 females. This one flew off north before low water when they normally prefer to feed.

Waders continue to deminish

Oystercatcher c300

Curlew 2

Whimbrel 3

Turnstone 1

Watch this Carrion Crow catch a small Common Goby, I think this is very impressive. Turnstone etc feed like this instinctively, but this crow has worked out, or learned to feed like this!

There was no additional sediment over the skear today. I try to avoid stepping on the seed mussels, but sometimes it is unavoidable. Today it felt like walking over a carpet with a thick underlay. Which is, of course, exactly what it was......a carpet of seed mussels over a new underlay of mud.

South shore - high water 15:20 (MD)

I checked from Red Nab to saltmarsh towards high water.

Little Egret 2

Shelduck 2

Wheatear 3

Linnet 3

There were no waders at all on the shore from saltmarsh to Potts Corner

Middleton Nature Reserve (Janet)

Sedge Warbler

Mallard with 9 chicks on "no swimming" pond

Subtle changes can make significant differences

A light SW to west breeze. Overcast in the morning sunny periods in the afternoon. Sea mist around high water.

Heysham skear - low water 09:00 (MD)

Eider 49

Mane and female Eider

Great Crested Grebe 12 - they have very complex displays, this is just a small part of one

Red-breasted Merganser 2 femals

Little Egret 5

Sandwich Tern 2 feeding

Again very few waders, although many of the Oystercatcher would have been on the outer skear.

Oystercatcher c200

Curlew 1

Whimbrel 3

Dunlin 1

As I was crossing the upper beach, it was obvious that there had been a lot of sediment dropped by the previous tide. The mud was at least 1cm thicker than yesterday and the top layer was slippy as it was not compacted. Yesterday's rain coupled with a fast ebbing spring tide must have cut a channel through one of the sandbars. Once they are breeched like this the ebbing tide quickly scours tonnes of mud from the bars. 

I thought no more about it until I was approaching the skear and realised that there were nowhere near as many gulls feeding on the seed mussels, and those that were feeding were on different areas to yesterday. 

This is why......

The seed mussels were covered in mud, even the ones still showing would be difficult to dislodge

This isn't an immediate concern for the mussels, they will release their bond to the rocky bottom and move  above the mud. But this then means that they are no longer anchored to the substate, just to each other, which makes them more vulnerable to being swept away when we have storms.

The only location today allowing the gulls easy pickings where along the edges of the honeycomb worm beds.

Up till now the seed mussels had been doing well growing on top of the honeycomb worm beds, but I don't know what will happen now that these have a coating of mud.....

.......but you have to imaging that additional mud must favour the worms who actively use the mud to build their tubes and grow the beds.

I don't know if this was a coincidence, but you don't commonly see sea slugs on the skear. This one had managed to get itself stranded.

Common grey sea slug

I placed it in a pool, unfortunately upside down at first.

I turned it over, it would have managed itself in time, but they are not the fastest movers. Here it is shooting off

This was another stranded creature, a barrel Jellyfish. I've always known them as Medusa Jellyfish and you can see why.

Barrel Jellyfish 

I moved it to a nearby pool, they are safe to handle by their dome.

Another slow mover, but at least it was moving

South shore 

Janet had a walk down the sea wall but the sea mist prevented her from seeing far, but she managed these shots at Red Nab

Little Egret through the mist

Ringed Plover

Dunlin and Ringed Plover

The House Sparrows in the Duke of Rothesay garden are feeding fledged young

Pete's check of the sea was also thwarted by the mist

Sea: two porpoise, one swallow and one sandwich tern then mist came in!

Time to make way for the next generation......

A light SE wind with prolonged heavy showers.

Seawatch report from Pete:

One hourish 1030-1130: 

Dark morph Arctic Skua in Cumbria - flew out then landed.

1 Manx Shearwater in mouth of bay

c7 Sandwich tern, 

2 Mute swan

at least 21 swallow and 2 house martin north  

Heysham skear - low water 08:20 (MD)

It rained throughout this walk

Eider 15

Great Crested Grebe 7

No mergansers seen

Little Egret 5

The gulls feeding on the seed mussels is now in full swing. I didn't count them, but these are less than half of just one of three main feeding groups.

Waders - not many!

Oystercatcher c200 

Ringed Plover 5 on inner skear

Curlew 2

Whimbrel 3

This immature Mute Swan was resting on a distant sand bar

It made me wonder if the breeding pair at Middleton Nature Reserve had displaced their five young from last season, so I checked on the way home.

Sure enough the 5 x 2nd calendar year birds were nowhere to be seen and the two adults were resting on the bank of the main pond. The male was preening, but the female looked like she was covering her new chicks.

She eventually graced me with a glimpse of her new family, but there was no way of counting how many.

Towards high water I checked the south side. Three more 2nd calendar year birds were flying around and appeared to head for the Lune estuary.

But they may have doubled back as there were also three on the north side, out from Half Moon Bay.

It's unlikely that all, if any, of the 2nd calendar year mute seen today were the outcasts from Middleton, presumably similar scenarios have been occurring in several other nesting areas. They will all have to find a suitable habitat not already occupied by mature birds. Not so easy as all the prime sites will already be occupied. 

Also on south side

Whimbrel 1 Red Nab

Linnet 4

Wheatear 1 

Wet look Wheatear

Also on Middleton 

This is the Mallard with 8 chicks

The Coot are still in dispute 

Roe Deer 1 female

Janet had a walk along the south sea wall

Plenty of gulls feeding on No.1 outflow

One of two Rock Pipit above the lighthouse nest site. This one has some small
food items in its bill. Food this size is typical of what they feed newly hatched chicks.

Early morning mist didn't help!

Breathless overnight and a SW breeze in the morning meant that the sea and inshore for a way was covered in mist. It remained overcast till mid afternoon when the sun broke through, then a warm sunny afternoon.

Middleton Nature Reserve 

Ringing report from Alan

The weather for ringing this morning was again not ideal with very low misty cloud and an unexpected brisk SW breeze. The misty cloud base was variable and almost down to ground level at times.

Ringing captures:

Sedge Warbler 6 + 1 retrap

Blackcap 1

Lesser Whitethroat 4

Common Whitethroat 1

Cetti's Warbler 2 

Willow Warbler 2

Garden Warbler 1

Song Thrush 1

Wren 1

Unsurprisingly little was seen overhead except for one Swallow flying towards the SW.

A Grey Heron took a Moorhen chick from the newly cleared area in the western reed bed accompanied by much squawking form the adult. It returned later hoping for another but without success.

Heysham skear - low water 07:40 (MD)

Another check on the rising tide, 90 minutes after low water.

Initially there was little chance of seeing anything through the mist, but it did start to lift as the tide came in.

Eider 31 - a few have taken to browsing the seed mussels from the shallow pools. This clip was actually from Saturday, but there were a couple feeding like this today.

Red-breasted Merganser 6

These mergansers flew off as the mist lifted

Great Crested Grebe 6

Little Egret 6

Sandwich Tern - some - there was almost always one calling and one seen on a few occasions, almost certainly more than one, but possibly as few as two.

Not many waders apart from the Oystercatchers:

Curlew 1

Whimbrel 23

Bar-Tailed Godwit 1

Dunlin 2

Ocean Edge to Red Nab (MD)

Just a quick late morning check

Wheatear 1

Shealduck 11

Litter Egret 4

Little Egret

Courting disaster!

Another dry day with some sunny spells, till the evening rains started. Light SE wind.

A summary of this morning's sightings by the LDBWS event on Heysham Head from Andrew McCafferty:

Not much! But eventually we had one guillemot floating a little bit before flying I guess in an outwards direction (south and away anyway!), and several flocks of scoters which kind of milled around mainly fairly far out. We didn't properly count them, but I'd say probably around 100 in the end.

Apart from that there were a few sandwich terns hanging around as normal, but we didn't spot any Arctics going through. A whimbrel popped up and showed on a nearby rock, and we also had a female wheatear hanging about.

Nice morning out, but nothing earth shattering!

Heysham skear - low water 07:00 (MD)

I went down 90 minutes after low water as the tide was covering the skear. 

Pintail  3 males - came overland from the SE and settled briefly on the sea.

Male Pintail - not common in the recording area

Before continuing their flight NW

Apart from the Oystercatcher there were very few waders, just:

Turnstone 21 - many moulting to summer plumage 

Turnstone moving to summer plumage 

Dunlin 3

Redshank just a solitary bird.

Redshank with only feathers for company

This is what today's title refers to. The Sandwich Terns were feeding, in fact the females were being fed. The males were bringing them fish (whitebait). The females waited on rocks for their beau to return with his love offering to reinforce their bond. 

This male got it wrong (or he was chancing his wing) and went to the "wrong" female to begin with. She saw him off, he then went to his waiting mate. She took the fish then gave him a severe scolding.......not the desired reaction.

Next time he didn't wait for a reaction 

Before finally getting it right!

Should be plenty to entertain for tomorrow's LDBWS seawatch event.

The very strong east wind eased before midnight. A light east wind in the morning gradually moved to NW. light showers early on but after that mainly dry with some sunshine.

The Heysham Bird Observatory annual report is now available - see image on sidebar. This is an excellent report, not just for the records (birds, butterflies, moths, dragonflies and mammals) but it also provides a summary of when to expect to see each bird species, and also some very interesting results from ringing and ring reading in the field. Contact Alan if you would like a copy (£4 collect or £5 post). Plus I will keep copies in my car if you see me out and about (Malcolm)

First some images from Kevin Singleton of his sightings on Heysham Head yesterday 

Male Linnet

Rock Pipit

Whimbrel 

Seawatch report from Pete:

Arctic tern 19 - 12 plus 6 plus 1 out

Sandwich Tern 25-30 outbound

Arctic Skua 1 light morph in low then climbing high 0840

Gannet 1

Common Scoter 6 plus 2 

Canada goose 1 

c20 swallow

Knot 25 non breeding plumage out

I had a walk along the north shore waterline on the rising tide (MD)

I started near the skear corner

Eider 10 on sea plus 2 out

Great Crested grebe 8 - these are 7 of them

Shelduck 4+2 out

Presumably this is the same Canada goose as seen by Pete

The hirundines became more frequent during the morning.

Swallow 42

House Martin 1

Grey Seal at least 2, probably 3 possibly more.

It's hard making an accurate count of the Sandwich Tern, some were feeding some resting others moving through. 14 was the most I could account for at any one time.

Sandwich Tern

Everything so far in today's post would have been visible from the location of the LDBWS event on Heysham Head tomorrow morning. This last clip of 7 resting (and canoodling) Sandwich Terns was actually taken from the stone graves on Heysham Head.

Tomorrow's event is open to none LDBWS members

https://lancasterbirdwatching.org.uk/meeting/sat-6th-may-07-30-ldbws-field-meeting-heysham-head-morning-migrants/

Middleton Nature Reserve (Janet)

The nesting Mute Swans on the "no swimming" pond now have at least 6 cygnets 

Looks like this Robin also has a family

The frogs have also had a successful breeding season, the "no swimming" pond is full of tadpoles! 

Roebuck