I suppose this wouldn't be a natural history blog, if I didn't complain about the weather from time to time, and just as sites were starting to dry out, it's raining again! There we go, complaint over...for now!
Mondays are a bit tied up for Gail and I, because we look after our grandson Alex, but on the Monday just gone, the weather actually dried up in the afternoon, and even the sun attempted to make an appearance. We bundled him into his car seat, threw the pram in the boot, and headed up to Larkholme. The plan was to have a wander along the sea-front with Alex in his pram, stretch our legs at the same time. My bins and notebook are always with me, and I did wonder whether an early Wheatear might make an appearance. It didn't.
The tide was just turning, and the sea was flat calm, perfect conditions for a cetacean or two perhaps, but that wasn't to be either. I only had my bins with me, so I was very limited as to what I could see and identify without my scope. At least 24 Eiders were drifting slowly on the mill pond, and then I picked up a small duck (small in comparison to the Eiders) heading north. Luckily for me, as it headed north it was coming closer to shore, and I could see that it was a male Scaup. Not what I was expecting when we decided to take Alex for a walk!
A Grey Wagtail and a few Meadow Pipits were feeding in the wet grassland, and eight Turnstones were on the stone armour along the shore.
It had been five days since we called at the Nature Park to check the water levels, and as it was quite sunny again on Tuesday afternoon, Gail and I decided to have a look on the pools to see if there were any early Sand Martins about. There wasn't. The water level in our ringing area had dropped, from five days ago, but it was still too flooded to get into the Willow scrub.
Again, the tide was on the turn, and there have been some big tides over the last few days, in the region of 10.6 metres, and these completely cover the saltmarsh. Gail spotted a Skylark on the edge of the saltmarsh feeding on seeds from some of the saltmarsh plants, and I managed to get a few photographs of it. We were enjoying watching it, until a dog walker asked us what we were looking at, and his dog flushed it. When we told him we were looking at birds, he said his dog chased birds!
Skylark (above & below)
Anyway, there were at least two Skylarks singing, and a further five birds feeding on some short-cropped grass. We had a look through the Gulls on the pools, and counted 80 Herring Gulls, 14 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, four Great Black-backed Gulls and five Black-headed Gulls. No spring white wingers.
Other counts from the pools included 25 Coot, the continually photographed pair of Great Crested Grebes that the 'Toggers' can't leave alone (how many full-framed shots of a Great Crest do you need?), 12 Mallards, five Tufted Ducks and five Little Grebes.
At least two Cetti's Warblers were singing, and also on the passerine front we had a fly-over Rock Pipit (pushed off the saltmarsh), three Reed Buntings and a pair of Stonechats. On the river were seven Wigeon, and a group of Black-tailed Godwits and Knots were heading back downstream as the tide fell.
Yesterday, Gail and I headed to our friend's farm where we have 30 nest boxes up for Tree Sparrows. They are not all used by Tree Sparrows of course, with the boxes closer to the yard being favoured by them. We checked all the boxes, and they were in fine fettle, and we only had to replace two.
We had a look on the wetland, and we had c.200 Teal and a Little Egret. A Chiffchaff was singing from the woodland where we have some of our boxes, and a pair of Buzzards were displaying.
It's looking wet again tomorrow, but there's a chance that it will be fit to get out Saturday morning. That's the issue at the moment, it just seems to be an hour here, or a couple of hours there, when it's fit enough to get out.
No comments:
Post a Comment