You can tell that the Meadow is going through a bit of a purple patch at present by the fact that this is the third blog posting in three nights! I went down for the evening gull roost again and was rewarded with a reasonably sized roost though sadly there was no sign of yesterday's Caspian. The 9 RUFF were back again - had I simply missed them yesterday or had they gone somewhere else to roost? 10 GOOSANDER came in to roost (9 males and 1 female) which was a good count. The most interesting sighting was a 1w drake GOLDENEYE which I found in amongst the Teal. This is a real Patch mega and quite possibly the first record for the floods as well as a very welcome Patch year tick.
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| 1w drake Goldeneye |
Also this evening Steve Goodard managed to find a BARN OWL in Burgess Field at dusk - another Patch year tick no less! Talking of which, I met Meadow veteran Matthew Foster today for the first time in quite a while. He quietly works away at his birding but is very much "off-grid" so I only get to hear about what he's seen when I bump into him. He reported a female STONECHAT in Burgess Field about a month or so ago - this is yet another Patch year tick for what has sadly become all too rare a species on the Meadow. So that's three year ticks to add to the total today - it's quite a last-gasp renaissance!
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