Friday 20th April


Another pleasant afternoon's birding on the Meadow today. The birds to report were pretty similar to yesterday though with at least one new Patch year tick. To start with the LITTLE GREBE was still along the Castle Mill Stream. At the southern end of the floods there were a couple of LITTLE EGRETS. Half way along the west shore the OYSTERCATCHER was still about. The two RINGED PLOVERS were still about at Stint Corner though they had lost their dunlin friends. The two WHEATEARS, both rather colourful birds so perhaps the Greenland sub-species, were still hanging around in the vicinity as well. On the floods themselves the two SHELDUCK were back and I saw one of them chasing of the ROSY-BILLED POCHARD. As I said when I first reported this exotic plastic duck, it does look like it's got a shelduck's beak stuck on the front of it and clearly the actual shelduck felt it was an intruder and chased it off to the Hinterland. Speaking of which, there were plenty of wagtail to sift through with three WHITE WAGTAILS and one YELLOW WAGTAIL the result. Lots of hirundines again with a few sand martins in amongst them, the first time that they've been hanging around this year as opposed to just passing through. Finally along the river shoreline I came across the first COMMON SANDPIPER of the year. It's interesting how often this species prefers to hang out here rather than on the floods.

One of the two wheatears

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