There's been a bit of an improvement with the birding on the Meadow this week. At the start of the week I did the monthly winter WeBS count survey. I soon found the first OYSTERCATCHER of the year and since then there have been at least two (and one day three) each day. There have also been a REDSHANK or two about most days as well as a few Golden Plover. The highlight of the survey itself was a fly-over heard-only GREEN SANDPIPER. This is normally quite a hard bird to get on the Meadow but fortunately they have quite a distinctive flight call and I heard it clearly enough even if I never saw it. There were three SHELDUCK on the floods yesterday - the first for a couple of weeks now.
At the end of the week Thomas Miller managed to find another ICELAND GULL in the roost which looked like a different bird from last time. Talking of the gull roost, numbers of large gulls have improved noticeably this week: I think that the floods in the fields have subsided so we're back to more traditional roosting locations now.
 |
| A phone-scoped picture of the Iceland Gull courtesy of Thomas Miller |
For those who are interested in lots of numbers, the full WeBS count totals were:
Oystercatcher
Green Sandpiper: heard-only fly-over.
3 Redshank
16 Golden Plover
96 Lapwing
5 Snipe
371 Teal
556 Wigeon
25 Mallard
10 Moorhen
2 Canada Geese
Greylag Geese (not counted as partially obscured)
Grey Heron
368 Black-headed Gull
29 Lesser Black-backed Gull
4 Herring Gull
Common Gull
With the bitterly cold snap for most of the coming week the floods may well be frozen so there might not be much going on. However, it is presently forecast to improve again towards the end of the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment