Friday, 5 February 2016

I Should Be Working!

Mrs Hairy Birder provided my blog title today! Gail was off this afternoon and when she got in I said I was struggling to come up with a title for my blog because it had been quiet (again) when I was out birding this morning, and she suggested 'I Should Be Working'! It was said with a touch of sarcasm and a wilting look!

My alternative title was 'dreich', because it was most certainly a dreich morning. It was grey, bleak, damp and a bit miserable to be honest. The visibility across the bay wasn't awful, but it wasn't good either! As a consequence the birding was slow, which is the story of my life at the minute!

The sea was very quiet, not a sniff of the decent numbers of Little Gulls I have missed over the past few days, with just eight Cormorants, 60 Eiders and three Red-breasted Mergansers. Few waders were on the beach as the tide ran in too, only 210 Oystercatchers, 43 Sanderlings and 22 Ringed Plovers graced the pages of my notebook.

I cut my losses and headed to the Marine Lakes to see if I could re-sight any of our leg-flagged Turnstones. There was about ninety roosting on the island or feeding on some seed left out by a passer-by on the shore, but I couldn't pick out any leg flags!

 Turnstone

On my way home I stopped to look through the Pink-footed Geese and like a couple of days ago there were about a thousand. The Barnacle Goose was still amongst them and a Greylag Goose was an addition.

 Pink-footed Geese

Just for a change the forecast is pretty awful for tomorrow, which is just as well as we are meeting some friends this evening for a few jars of real ale!

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