After The Thunderstorms

During the early hours of Sunday morning up here in northwest Lancashire we had some quite 'beefy' thunderstorms with some heavy rain. By about 6:15 a.m. it sounded like it had stopped raining so I got up and went out birding.

My first port of call was the cemetery to look for any grounded migrants, but just as I arrived the heavens opened and I had to sit patiently in my car for three quarters of an hour until it stopped raining. On my walk round I didn't record a single grounded migrant, which wasn't completely surprising as the rain had started fairly early on in the night preventing a number of migrants from moving. Two Snipes and a Grey Wag over were the only species of interest that I entered into my notebook.

There was a fairly early morning tide, and I was limited for time I decided to head to the Point and count the roosting waders. It was a 'low' high tide and this was reflected in the lower numbers of waders roosting. I counted 132 Ringed Plovers, ten Turnstones, 37 Sanderlings, two Curlews, a Redshank and 57 Oystercatchers.

 Oystercatchers

 Ringed Plover and Sanderlings

In between counting the waders I kept a brief eye on the sea and recorded nine Common Scoters, a Guillemot, a Wigeon and eight Sandwich Terns. Four Wheatears on the shore were obviously grounded migrants and that's your lot.

This evening we are at the Swallow roost and it will be interesting to see how many are roosting as it has been a good day for movement for them. I'll let you know!