RSPB Old Moor - 17th August 2011

For the last few years I have subscribed to the Birdguides website as a way of keeping up with bird news from around the country. Looking through the sightings recently I noticed that RSPB Old Moor at Barnsley was beginning to record its first passage waders of the autumn and so decided to go along and have a look myself.

Wath Ings hide at the far end of the reserve is usually the best place for waders, so I  started here. First up were the Green Sandpiper, with an amazing count of 15!

Green Sandpiper

Also from this hide were 3 Knot, a very good inland record, 2 Greenshank, at least 5 summer plumaged Dunlin, 1 Wood Sandpiper, 1 Redshank, 1 juvenile Spotted Redshank, 4 Ringed Plover and around 100 Lapwing.

Knot

Away from the waders there were also 20+ Sand Martin, 6 Swift, my latest ever record, Common Terns feeding 3 juveniles, dozens of Canada Goose and Greylag Goose, Mallard, Teal, Wigeon, Gadwall, Great Crested and Little Grebe, Grey Heron and Tufted Duck, as well as many small passerines such as Tree Sparrows, Linnets and Greenfinch.

Whitby and Scarborough

Just come back from a few days in Whitby and Scarborough, where we enjoyed a bit of sunshine, a couple of games of crazy golf and some great seabirds.



Whitby Harbour

Around the harbour I saw dozens of Herring Gulls (adults and juveniles), 1 Lesser Black-backed Gull, 1 Great Black-backed Gull, 2 returning Turnstones, Black-headed Gulls, 2 Fulmar, Cormorant, Starling and Oystercatcher.

On the way home we stopped off at Scarborough to look for the Mediterranean Gulls that winter around the area. 4 birds; 2 moulting adults and 2 juvenile birds, were found on the rocks belowthe Spa in the South Bay.

Mediterranean Gull (moulting adult)

Also present on the rocks were all the ususal gulls, Oystercatcher and an adult Sandwich Tern, which was also moulting out of summer plumage.

Adult Sandwich Tern





Linacre - 9th August 2011 Sunshine, Butterflies and another Sandpiper

I had a lovely walk around Linacre this morning in bright sunshine and 16 dgerees of heat! The highlights were 5 species of butterfly, some lovely new flowers, loads of hoverflies and another Common Sandpiper!

First up were the butterflies with 4 Gatekeepers, 1 Peacock, 5 Meadow Browns, 2 Small Coppers and  2 Speckled Woods.

Gatekeeper

Meadow Brown

Peacock

Next up were the birds: Common Sandpiper (1 on the middle reservoir), Cormorant (3, the highest count yet), Mallard (56), Tufted Duck (25), Mandarin (16), Swallow (3), House Martin (10), Grey Wagtail (3), Pied Wagtail (1).

Lastly, one photograph of the on going works on the middle reservoir.

 

RSPB Dungeness - 27th July 2011

Hello and welcome back! Just been away to Kent for a family holiday, hence the lack of updates.

Whilst down in Kent we visited the RSPB site at Dungeness.

As is to be expected at this time of year it was pretty quiet, but we did manage to see  a few nice birds and got a chance to explore this part of the world.

The highlight was the ARC hide where a good number of waders were spotted including summer plumaged Golden Plover, a couple of hundred Lapwing, 3 Little Ringed Plover,including a juvenile bird, 1 Common Sandpiper and a couple of summer plumaged Dunlin.  Also here were 3 Little Egret and my first Teal and Wigeon of the "winter".

Golden Plover and Lapwing

Over on the main site we visited 5 hides and saw many commoner species such as Mallard, Mute Swan, Pochard, Tufted Duck, Oystercatcher, Great-crested Grebe, Moorhen and Coot. The main highlight on this site however, was the pair of nesting Common Tern, with 1 chick seen from Denge Marsh Hide.

Common Tern with chick

Linacre- WeBS Walk 17th July 2011

After being postponed yesterday because of the bad weather, I popped out this morning to carry out this month's Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS).  Good numbers of Mallard and Mandarin Duck were about and the first sign of winter was evident in the shape of 2 Cormorants!

Cormorant

Summer migrants that were still around were 2 singing Chiffchaffs, Swallow and 8 House Martins recorded. Counts for this month's WeBS walk were: Mallard (60), Tufted Duck (24), Little Grebe (2 adults, no sign of any juveniles), Coot (8), Moorhen (9), Mandarin Duck (20), Pied Wagtail (1), Grey Wagtail (2),

Linacre - 10th July 2011 Sandpipers Galore!!

A quiet walk this morning with the highlight being 2 Common Sandpipers that were flying around the middle reservoir. We had several sightings at the end of April, so these birds could be the same ones that have been around all summer. More likley though, is that these two are passage birds that have been attracted in by the abundance of mud available at the moment. Whatever the case, they are a great record and really nice to see. No photos of these birds, but here's one from earlier.

Common Sandpiper

Apart from these two birds, the reservoirs were pretty quiet with just Mallard (59), Tufted Duck (24), Little Grebe (2), Great-crested Grebe (1), Grey Wagtail (5), Swift (1), Mandarin (18), Coot (4) and Moorhen (5) recorded.

Maintenance work had begun on the middle reservoir, so here's an exciting photo of a building site!



Linacre - 2nd July 2011 Work begins and a male Pochard!!

The first visit of July provided a nice surprise when a male Pochard was found feeding on the middle reservoir with 23 Tufted Ducks.

Pochard (male)

This is my first ever summer record  at Linacre and in fact the first site record since  March 2009!! Not sure where it's come from, but its always great to add new birds to the list. The 2 juvenile  Little Grebes were still on the bottom reservoir, 2 Grey Herons were seen, including 1 on the nest(?), an amazing total of 7 Grey Wagtails were on the middle reservoir (my highest ever count), and Mallard numbers were quite high with 45 adults and 18 ducklings scattered around the site. There were also 2 broods of Mandarin Duck (6 and 3) and 2 female birds, but unfortunately, no sign of last week's baby Moorhens.

Away from the water 1 Meadow Brown was flying around and a Small Tortoiseshell was found warming up on the boardwalk.

Small Tortoiseshell

Smaller birds were present in good numbers with 8 Swallows, 2 juvenile Robins, Jay, singing Song Thrush and Wren, and a female Blackcap all being seen around the reservoirs.

As regular readers will know, the water levels in all three reservoirs have been dropped over the last few months to allow for essential maintenance work to be carried out. Well, it appears the work has now  begun with a new access road being built by the bottom reservoir. Here's the first pictures- lovely!!