Saturday 9 August 2014

Down By The Quayside

It was windy-ish this morning, but only a force three west-northwesterly, but I still headed to the shore to have a look on the sea. I made the school boy error of not consulting my tide tables before setting out and high tide was later than I had guessed it would be. Nevertheless I decided to stick it out.

I had very few waders on the shore as the tide was yet to push them up to their roost and they still had plenty of open shore and mudflats to feed on; all I had were four Ringed Plovers, 15 Turnstones, 14 Dunlins, two Redshanks and five Curlews.

The sea was even quieter than the shore with just two Sandwich Terns, two Arctic Terns and three Cormorants making an appearance, so after about an hour I decided to call it quits and have a look on the mudflats in the quay.

 The Quayside

From a birding perspective it was a little more enjoyable and productive here with 96 Redshanks and a lovely fresh juvenile Dunlin feeding on the muddy margins of the creeks. Out on the spit were three Whimbrel and four Lapwings were on the saltmarsh. There was nothing of interest amongst the 212 Herring Gulls and 34 Black-headed Gulls, so I decided to call it a day (more like an early morning!) and headed home.

 Redshanks

No comments: