On Friday, Gail and I took part in the Winter Gull Survey (WinGS), as organised by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). WinGS is a long running monitoring programme which has taken place approximately every ten years since 1953, however there has been a gap of nearly twenty years since the last survey, so this latest survey is much-needed. The project's overarching aim is to provide robust information on the numbers and distributions of wintering gulls, many of which are of conservation concern, and appear on either the Birds of Conservation Concern (BoCC) Red or Amber list.
The key count date for the survey is today, 21st January, but counts can be completed a week either side of this date. Gail and I opted to do our survey overlooking the Wyre estuary on Friday, 19th January, as the forecast for the weekend, particularly today was awful. And as I type, we have heavy rain with gale force south-westerly winds. I'm glad we completed the survey on Friday!
I'll jump straight to the results, and tell you that we recorded 51 Black-headed Gulls, 2 Common Gulls, 10 Great Black-backed Gulls, 1,029 Herring Gulls and 1 Lesser Black-backed Gull. During the survey we had 6 oktas cloud cover, with a 20 - 25 mph WSW wind.
Luckily, we could shelter from the wind at the base of Fleetwood's Lower Lighthouse, affording us great views over the Wyre estuary. We surveyed from 1430 until 1640, and it was the last three quarters of an hour or so, where we had the most Gull action. Gulls, mainly Herring Gulls as you can see from our results above, were arriving on flight-lines and roosting on the sea out in the mouth of the estuary.
However, there were far more Gulls roosting at three different locations that we could see from our vantage point, but these were well beyond the boundaries of our survey area. Thousands of Gulls were roosting at these three locations; King Scar Island, Cocker's Dyke and off Fluke Hall.
King Scar Island, is a shingle island that has formed to the northwest of the Wyre Estuary, 3.8 km NW of our VP, probably since the date of the last WinGS. Looking west from our VP we could see streams of Gulls flying out to King Scar Island to roost, and the shingle ridge was covered in thousands of roosting Gulls.
The two other large roosts were to the east of us, out on the expanse of mud and saltmarsh, at a distance of 3.4 km (Cocker's Dyke) and 5.3 km (off Fluke Hall), and again, well beyond our survey area. Just like King Scar, thousands of Gulls were involved, and I understand that somebody will be counting at Cocker's Dyke tomorrow.
We had an enjoyable couple of hours, and besides the Gulls we had a few bits and pieces. As we were busy counting Gulls, we did not count the huge number of Oystercatchers on Great Knott on the other side of the estuary from us, but there were a lot! Other wader species included Redshank, Turnstone, Curlew, Dunlin, Sanderling and Grey Plover.
In the mouth of the estuary, were four Red-breasted Mergansers, six Eiders and a Guillemot. The Guillemot was closely attended by two 2nd winter Great Black-backed Gulls, and was acting particularly menacing towards the Guillie. One individual Great Black-backed Gull made several attempts to attack the Guillemot, but the Guillie was a feisty little bird, and managed to fend off the attacks. As the Great Black-backed would hover over the Guillemot, the Guillie would rise out of the water, almost jumping in to the air, and strike at the Great Black-backed Gull. Eventually, the Gulls gave up, and flew-off, leaving the Guillie in peace. A female Teal flew out of the estuary and along the shore to our west, and as the tide was rising, 32 Wigeons headed upstream.
The forecast is looking a bit mixed for the coming week, and if possible, we have a wintering bird survey to get in, but it's looking likely that it will be towards the end of the week, and we have to top-up at our feeding station as well.
On this day in 2007, I had a rare trip north, with my friend Graham J, to see a rare bird near Callander in Perthshire. The rare bird in question, was a male Barrow's Goldeneye, and we had good views of it, eventually, as it displayed to a group of five female Common Goldeneyes. In addition to the Barrow's Goldeneye, we also had a few other good birds as well, including two Dippers, five Siskins, three Bewick's Swans, a female Goshawk, two Common Redpolls, a Red Kite and two Common Crossbills. Not bad for a few hours winter birding.
No comments:
Post a Comment