Monday 6 February 2012

Strange sighting confirmed

The Safari woke up to dense fog this morning. Patch 1 was dominated by clucking Blackbirds although both Song Thrushes were singing by the time we got round to their respective territories.
Patch 2 was just about totally fogged out but we did see two pairs of Great Crested Grebes and in the distance 200 or so ethereal shapes were Common Scoters.
On Sturday as we were leaving the beach a Redshank flew over us and appeared to come down in the garden at work. If it did it was quite an unusual event as in seven years we've never seen one on the back field. But this morning there were three! At first we thought it might have had something to do with the fog and they couldn't see the dog walkers and their many mutts but see them they could and just meandered their way to the furthest side of the puddle if any came too close.





 OK so the pic quality isn't that good - what do you expect at 08.00 on a foggy morning before the sun has got over the rooftops!
A little later the light had improved and despite dozens of dog walkers they were still firmly attached to their puddle.

 So relaxed were they that they even manaied 40 winks
At lunchtime we took a stroll long the beach so see if we could find the white egg masses seen on Saturday but there was too much water in the runnels and the tide had left the rockpools very turbid. We did get a pic of an Edible Periwinkle.
You can see the diagnostic laterally striped tentacles and the straight edge to the whorls.
Where to next? Maybe nowhere tomorrow until later in the afternoon.
In the meantime let us know what's causing lack of visibility in your outback.

5 comments:

Warren Baker said...

Oh for one of those Redshanks to drop in on one of the fields on my patch!!

PS got a ticket fro thursdays KOS talk now :-)

Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

Just shows anything can happen, Warren...fingers crossed.
Enjoy MG - heard he's gonna do some gulling in N. Cheshire in March hope I'm available this time.

Cheers

Davo

Anonymous said...

Those Redshanks are like my Tufties, Dave, snoozing with one eye open.

Stuart Price said...

So did you eat it then (well you said it's edible)!

Unknown said...

Interesting to see confirmation of that unusual behaviour. Were they feeding in/around the puddle then? Might be worth running a sieve through it...
That periwinkle is just about eating size I reckon!