Some you lose; some you win!

The Safari might well consider yesterday’s nothing happening and then failing to nail the diver sea-watch as a lose. But this morning’s effort was even worse. 

On the way to work we didn't pay enough attention to a Blackbird in a weird place along the prom, driving by it appeared to have a big flash of white but serious rubber-necking couldn't clinch if it was a trick of the light or a Ring Ouzel...darn it!!!

Out at sea there were just two groups of about 50 Common Scoters which is well down on recent weeks as they filter away northwards to their sub-Arctic breeding grounds.

Small parties of bouncy passerines, probably numbering well over 50 in the end, passed through the field of view at a fair distance out over the sea – no chance of IDing them but Meadow Pipits would be the obvious choice; the Rangers had over 40 grounded early on at the nature reserve.  

The beach provided a, reasonable for here but tiny compared to the 15000+ on the south-side last w/end, flock of 18 Knot among the 100 or so uncounted Oystercatchers and numerous gulls.

At lunchtime we scored a direct hit with two Sandwich Terns as soon as we peered down the scope...but that was about as good as it got :-( or so we thought!

The tide had just about reached the wall but there was still some beach away to the south so we had a scan of that and in doing so found a Great Crested Grebe close to the wall and two other birds in the choppy waves somewhere around about the low water mark.

Now looking south at lunchtime is often tricky as we’re looking in to the sun, today was no exception but as luck would have it scudding clouds were passing over head from time to time and improved the viewing conditions. It was soon apparent that the smaller of the two birds was a male Common Scoter and the other was a diver. The chop made them only visible for the briefest of moments and with them drifting on the tide we had to second guess where they’d appear next. Eventually with much concentration we were able to clinch the ID of the diver as an immature/ad win plum Black Throated Diver (150) – (big) win! As it drifted nearer we hoped for even better views but it dived before it got much closer and we weren’t able to relocate it. Now was this the same bird as yesterday...we think there’s a high probability that it was.

With the bright sunshine we thought we’d try to get an arty shot of the Mirror Ball but we were a bit early so spent a few minutes checking out the joints in the sea wall for any Sea Slaters, as is usually the case by lunchtime it’s got too warm and dry and they have hidden themselves away. While we were looking one of the fishermen sought us out to tell us that there was a dead Heron on the sea wall although by now the tide might have lifted it off. We quizzed him a little and found out it was a pure white one, thought immediately turned to Little Egret. We had to investigate. But as predicated the tide had indeed covered the area it was seen in but the sharp eyes of another fisherman spotted it in the frothy surf just below us. Within a couple of swashes of the waves we could tell it wasn’t any species of heron at all but an adult Gannet. 

He also told us that while he’d been bait digging out on the tide’s edge this morning he’d seen ‘several’ dead gulls – might need the wellies on tomorrow morning to have a look see...one or two dead gulls might be expected but ‘several’ sounds a bit suss.

Later in the afternoon we were on the phone to the Rangers and during the conversation we heard a Blackcap singing down the phone...can we count that one on our Nature Reserve year list?

So 150 year birds are now ‘in the bag’. 3/4s of the way to our target and still a few common(ish) local birds not seen, like Dipper, Kingfisher, either of the partridges and Sand Martin, all of which should be expected to be on the list before the end of March. A dibble through the field guide only gives us about another 40 so it looks like without a safari somewhere abroad we’re not going to reach our goal; good job we’ve got a seat booked to Australia later in the year – watch out Monika, the big guns are coming out!

Where to next? A late finish at work so we might have a late start and a couple of morning safaris.

In the meantime let us know what's sloshing around on the tide in your outback.