Wednesday 30 December 2009

A Cold and Quiet Morning

Once again I was at Rossall Point this morning looking onto an empty sea, well not quite, with a freezing cold easterly wind for company, until three other birders from East Lancs turned up. Nice to see you Pete and co. It was a very dull day with full cloud cover and the ESE wind was somewhere between 15 and 20 mph. I did my usual 'Coastguards Tower' dance as I tried to find the best spot to shelter from the 'lazy' wind. In Norfolk they refer to an easterly or a northerly wind in winter as a 'lazy' wind because it goes straight through you and not round you.

There were quite a few Sanderling again this morning, in fact more than yesterday, with 261 counted. They were joined by 88 Oystercatchers, six Grey Plovers and two each of Ringed Plover, Turnstone and Redshank.


Out on the sea it was fairly quiet with fifteen Eiders, eighteen Common Scoters, only three Red-throated Divers, ten Red-breasted Mergansers, single Kittiwake, Guillemot and Little Gull, and five Wigeon that flew east into the bay. Two Starlings came in off the sea and a male Stonechat feeding on the concrete sea front ended a none too memorable morning.

The Ring-necked Duck from yesterday wasn't on the ICI Reservoir this morning, but had moved to Preesall Flashes, as later re-found by Maurice. I got the news from Ian re the Ring-necked Duck as he went to check if it was there early on. When he got back to the car park two birders asked him if it was still there and he gave them the negative news. As he got in to his car he heard one of these birders saying to the other "what are we going to do now?" the state of modern birding! Don't get me started.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for a nice trip down memory lane.

I used to bird at Rossall Point in the late '50s, when I lived in Thornton and was at school in Poulton. The best I ever logged there was 2nd Yr Glaucous Gull and Snow Bunting a few times.

Jonny Scragg said...

The sanderlings seem to be increasing by the day. Which school did u go to John out of interest?

The Hairy Birder said...

Your welcome John.

How often did you bird Rossall Point in the late 1950S?

Unknown said...

To answer both questions in one go, I went to Baines'GS and I'm sorry to say I birded RP rather infrequently.
I spent more time at Leighton Moss, Cockerham Moss, Marton Mere and, of course, Freckleton SF. During the school holidays I was always out of the area down in Dorset.