Friday 18th May

There's been a slight pick-up in bird sightings over the last couple of days. Nothing to get too excited about but at least there are now some birds to report on the floods. Yesterday there was a single OYSTERCATCHER and the LITTLE EGRETS and grey heron have been regular visitors. On the duck front we've now got some SHELDUCK back with four birds today and there are still some lingering TUFTED DUCK about as well as at least 8 gadwall and a single shoveler still. Finally, the two LITTLE GULLS are still around, hanging out with the black-headed gulls.

Yesterday I went on a run around the patch in order to check out the warblers. There were at least two singing male reed warblers in the Trap Grounds reedbed. Still plenty of whitethroat and garden warblers singing away in Burgess Field though still no grasshopper warblers or sedge warblers though I did finally find one of the latter singing away behind the Walton Well Road car park.



The two little gulls are lovely to watch. On one day when I was watching them from across the other side of the floods I noticed that they did seem to have an extended part to the centre of the tail which did get me wondering about Ross's Gull though as you can see from the upper photo it's actually because they are part way moulting out their first winter black terminal tail band.

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