Two posts in two days - things must be hotting up! Indeed there was a reasonably long list of "birds of note" to report today from my late afternoon visit to the Meadow. Top of the bill goes to a CURLEW that flew over calling. This species is a bit less than annual on the patch (we didn't get one last year for example) so I was very pleased to hear it's plaintive call and then to spot it flying about. It did circle once and I thought that it was going to land but sadly it didn't. Yesterday's OYSTERCATCHER was joined by a second bird which was nice to see. Also of note were the usual suspects: 6 SHELDUCK, 7 GOOSANDER and 6 PINTAIL this evening.
The gull roost was a rather modest affair with only a small number of larger gulls. It's a shame as I'm really hoping for a white-winger this month. Indeed a 2w Iceland Gull was seen at Didcot today so there's at least one in the county. Whilst there was nothing of note in the roost tonight, yesterday evening I had an intriguing gull which superficially looked like a 1w Caspian though it's scaps were so dark and coarsely barred that apparently (according to Ian Lewington) it can best be described as "having some Caspian parentage". We are very much getting to that time of year when all the good gulls get taken and we are left with the weirdo "unmateables".
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| Poor video grab - it's got something of a cachinnans about it but there's too much wrong with it! |
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