Thursday 23rd May

It's been all too depressingly samey on the Patch since I last posted. The weather has been a mixed bag but never lovely and warm (which would please me) or torrential rain (which would at least top up the floods). Instead the floods have been reduced to a central pool by Burgess Channel and a subsidiary pool right down by the Southern Tail. The only birds which it now seems to be attracting are RINGED PLOVER. Indeed there have been some good counts this week with 11 (plus one DUNLIN) on Wednesday and then a stonking count of 26 today which to my knowledge is a Patch Record. The two SHELDUCK have been around on and off, there's been the odd Gadwall still lurking and the two COMMON TERNS come and sit on their little wooden platform by the pool but that's been about it. I'm still hoping that we might get a Stint or a Wood Sandpiper by the end of the month but that's based more optimism rather than any realistic expectation. 

I did check out Burgess Field to see if any of the butterflies were on the wing yet but there's no sign of them - the strange spring has put their emergence times all back several weeks. Fledglings are continuing to appear in the garden periodically: our cat brought in a juvenile Robin yesterday (sadly dead) and there was a juvenile Chaffinch on the feeders today.



A Ringed Plover Bonanza

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