What Happened To The Rain?

The weather men, weather ladies, Internet forecasts etc all seemed to agree that a front was coming across the Northwest this morning and it would dump a load of rain on us sometime fairly early in the morning. Based on the forecast ringing was off, but I thought there was a chance of a sneaky hours birding before the rain came in. Sneaky hour!, I could have had the whole morning ringing because all we got was a light shower at about 0900!

Anyway, I went up to Rossall as there was a morning tide but it was very quiet. A few waders were on the beach including 111 Oystercatchers, 82 Dunlin, 12 Turnstones, 22 Ringed Plovers, 9 Sanderling and 4 Redshanks. There was next to no vis other than 11 Swallows east and the 20 Linnets knocking about were off passage birds.

 Dunlin

The sea was equally quiet with just 25 Sandwich Terns and 12 Common Scoters the rewards for all my efforts.

I decided to call it quits and head home but not before I had a quick look in the cemetery. A Whitethroat in the west hedgerow was probably a local breeder and a male House Sparrow carrying a faecal sack was all I had of interest.

I have just looked at a few Internet forecasts and we might get some ringing done in the morning, although it will be a touch windy. The BBC forecast made me laugh as it contradicted itself within it's own forecast. The three hourly summary for overnight and in to tomorrow showed no rain, yet the predicted rainfall sequence map showed it raining overnight and into tomorrow. I'll leave it a while yet before deciding what to do.