High tide duck fest

The Safari set off once again into the cold dark darkness of Patch 1 with the trusty, trusty not rusty, bins round our neck in the vain hope that the mystery silhouette would be present and easy to identify.
On the way it was evident that the forecast overnight snow hadn’t arrived. We did get a tiny bit late last night but that had somehow managed to melt away even though the overnight temperature was barely above freezing. We could see two Peregrines roosting close together on separate ledges, only one was there late last night so the other must have joined it in the wee small hours from elsewhere. A minute or so later a Fox dashed across the green a hundred yards in front of us.
Passing by Magpie Wood there were a lot of Magpies to count, we did three passes and got a best count of 79 – our record count ever and there were probably more deeper in to the gloom we couldn’t see. Is the ton possible?
As for the silhouette – not a sniff; the only thing we found was a loose ‘flock’ or ‘aggregation’ of five Woodpigeons roosting sort of together deep in one tree. Has whatever it was gone or will all be revealed tomorrow?
The snow arrived as we were leaving for work, early today as we had an appointment with the Tree Officer who gave us a Land Rover full of wood to keep Little Bertha fed over the holiday period – many thanks P. And many thanks to the Elm Bark Beetle and associated fungus for providing all the dead trees. Fortunately in town we now plant more trees each year than are lost to DED or wind damage, we’ll just have to wait a while for them to reach full size.
The Patch 2 safari early doors was a cold windy vigil. We had to wait the best part of an hour for it to get light enough to be able to see anything before venturing out, fortunately the sun had come out by then and it had stopped snowing.
It was high tide although a rather low neap one and with the northerly wind pushing against it the sea was quite rough. A few small flocks of Common Scoters were scattered about and small strings of Cormorants flew from the mouth of the estuary out to sea. A number of Common Gulls passed close by all heading into the wind. Somewhat bizarrely the horizon was lost in a shimmer of ‘heat’ haze – weird or what; maybe it was cold haze! Out there we saw the odd Common Scoter whizzing this way and that low over the waves and a few Great Black Backed Gulls careening around. Closer in a black and white bird briefly showed on the water, another Great Black Backed Gull but then in a trough just behind it was another, only this time the black and white pattern was a little different – a male Eider – nice! Concentrating on this to see if it had any friends two birds flew south through the field of view, one was yet another Common Scoter but the other was something different altogether...a female or immature male Long Tailed Duck (191, 102). Whoopy-double-do, an excellent bonus bird and fair reward for cold patch perseverance – we just knew there was a ‘goody’ out there to be had sooner or later. Now can we have another good one please? This is the first Long Tailed Duck we’ve seen for a long, long time, so long in fact that we can’t actually remember the last one we had, one on the nature reserve at the end of the nineties or was it the early noughties perhaps...jeez was it that long ago?
A quick nip over the road at lunchtime gave us very little; both adult Great Black Backed Gull and Lesser Black Backed Gull were stood on the beach and we saw two Turnstones on the outfall pipe. Not a lot else but a few gulls were making hay on the shellfish being washed up. As it wasn’t too uncomfortable out we shot back in to the office donned our wellies, gabbed a plassy bag and went back down on to the beach shell hunting. The mission was to try to find some of the small shells and make up a montage like we’d done with the larger ones last week.
It was soon evident there was plenty to look at – what a brilliant beach we have!
Look at the size of those Common Starfish!

The Brittle Star (Amphiura filiformis?) is still alive and was returned to safety after his photo-shoot. Putting him back among the debris at the base of the outflow pipe we came across this large Prickly Cockle and these bits of an Edible Crab – a Patch 2 tick! Looks like the claw is too big to go with the carapace so there are two individuals here.

We soon filled our bag and went back to scald our collection so that it wont reek of dead things in the office on Monday morning. On the way back we found this live Common Starfish lurking in a bit of a rockpool. Nice tubefeet there boyo.

Fortunately we saw this chaps legs before the shell got dunked in the hot water. A Hermit Crab out of a whelk shell is like a fish out of water.

That's a fierce set of spike-laden claws!

Following the numbers we have 1. Common Otter Shell, never found a complete one before, 2. Thin Tellins(?) (Angulus tenuis rather than Baltic Tellin Macoma balthica), 3. Banded Wedge Shells, Common Scoter food, 4. Large Necklace Shell, 5. Rayed Trough Shell showing the ‘predation hole’ made by a Necklace Shell, 6. Curved Razor Shell, another Patch 2 tick!, 7. Striped Venus Shells, 8. Tower Shell, 9. Dog Whelk(?) and a small Edible Whelk(?), 10. Common Cockle, 11. White Piddock, these are so fragile it’s rare to find a complete specimen, 12, Blunt Gaper, a third beach Patch 2 tick and a Lifer too – whoo-hoo what a day!
If anyone can shed like on the tellin and whelk IDs we’d be grateful.
Here are some close ups.

White Piddock.

Whelks of 'not sure' species.

Necklace Shell drill hole in a Rayed Trough Shell.

Blunt Gaper compared to Common Otter Shell, having not seen one before we didn't realise how small they were in comparison to the Otters.

The Banded Wedge Shells, lovely purple interiors when fresh.

We even managed a pic of a bird - a Redshank!

It had a little friend too - a Turnstone. Actually the Turnstone wasn't that friendly cos it tried to land on the Redshank's head!

And then the Grey Plover - a little distant but hey we got it!

Where to next? Not sure how to follow that little run of success but it is the weekend so we might get a short safari in somewhere.
In the meantime let us know if your outback played a blinder today.
Just had a quick run round Patch 1 and guess what - we think we know what the silhouette is...a Carrion flippin Crow!!! Two were seen easily in the bright snowy conditions and out on the end of the twigs...case solved we'd say. One Peregrine on the usual ledge too.

More silhouetty nonsense

The Safari went out on Patch 1 armed with the bins again this morning in the hope that our mysterious silhouette had reappeared...we’ll find out what it is it if it kills us!!!
The Peregrine was there last night seen by the light from the streetlamps but this morning the face it was sat on was wet from the overnight rain. It was impossible to tell if the bird was still there, a small dark spot is much harder to see against a similarly dark background than the dry light background; chances are it will have moved around the back out of the rain and out of sight.
So how did we get on with the silhouette – was it there or was it not? Well, it might have been...we got in to thee park and carefully checked the tops of the trees on the far side of the butterfly zone, nothing...we quietly walked a bit further and checked again, nothing another few steps and b*gger we flushed something whose wings didn’t clatter and which didn’t call from the tree right above our head....damn!!!
So we walked round in the dark keeping an eye on the tops of the trees, nothing...until we got to the bottom of the hill. Here, scanning through the twigs and branches we found two sleeping Woodpigeons, their heads tucked under their wings. Whatever the silhouette is it isn’t one of these as they are tucked away deep in the ‘foliage’ or whatever you call bare branches and our mystery bird was sat right at the top of the tree at the very tip of the branch. A little later, back in the butterfly zone on the other side of the path we found a third Woodpigeon, this one was a little more exposed than the first two but still very different to the mystery thingy. Only one thing for it – take the bins again tomorrow!
No patch 2 early morning safari again today, not traffic induced misery this time but atrocious weather – yes we bottled out!
By mid morning the rain had stopped, the wind was much less strong and although the sun came out and skies were blue the temperature began to fall, almost as quickly as the Land Rover’s fuel gauge did yesterday morning, as our forecast cold snap rolled in. Snow over the weekend?...Maybe, but more likely just more sub-zero temperatures here. This December is already averaging 4°C cooler than last year’s ‘perfectly normal’ December.
By the time our it was time for our lunchtime safari the temperature had dropped from the ‘warm’ early morning 8°C to just 3°C. The northerly snow laden breeze made it feel colder than that and we had the wrong gloves on...obviously lulled into a false sense of security by the ‘warmth’ earlier on. We spent just enough time out there to count the waders on down on the tide line. There seemed to be a frenzy going on along a short length of beach with plenty of gulls squabbling for the best bits. Wader numbers weren’t anything special, 34 Sanderlings and four Dunlins for the little stuff with 9 Redshanks and a somewhat surprising Turnstone, surprising in that this was right out on the open beach well away from the outfall pipe and at low tide so well away from the sea wall too.
A swiftish check through the gulls didn’t give us anything special. One, a large and very aggressive Herring Gull, kept stealing what the others had found; leaping in with outstretched ‘albatross’ wings which showed a long all white tip to P10 along with a substantial mirror on P9 with reduced head streaking too, possibly a Scandinavian visitor? Sadly far too distant in the dull conditions and the bird too erratic to even contemplate getting a pic for the serious Laridophiles to mull over but looked like the one shown here dated 14th Feb 2009.
Could we start a new trend in gull nomenclature by calling argentatus Herring Gulls 'Viking Gulls'; sounds good don’t you think?
Then the snow came down.
Where to next? I see a little silhouetto of a...
Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the Fandango...
In the meantime let us know how thick the snow is likely to lie in your outback.
Might be a pic of something if there's blue sky and sunshine tomorrow...you'll be lucky!

Sadly no silhouette

The Safari set off this morning in the cold and frosty darkness armed with the trusty bins. 49 Magpies counted roosting in Magpie Wood would have hit the notebook had we been able to get the gloved hand in to the pocket. Yesterday teatime whilst playing footy with Frank we saw that the Peregrine was on its roosting ledge in the dark but five hours later it had gone and hadn’t reappeared by this morning, given that it was a calm night we would have expected it to have been there all night.
With bins at the ready we got in to the park and had a look through the twiggy tree tops with the naked eye first – nothing, not a blob of anything out of the ordinary just plain ol’ twigs – how annoying is that! We had the bottom end of the park to ourselves as the usual crowd of early morning dog walkers hadn’t arrived yet...we could hear them coming through the gate at the top of the hill...scanning the trees along the bottom perimeter again we could see nothing resembling a strange or untoward silhouette – damn thing as b*ggered off!!! Will it have reappeared tomorrow morning?
No Patch 2 safari this morning, we were scuppered by traffic jams. Wifey was away on business in the Big Smoke (London) and we had to take Frank to his dog-sitter a little to the north of Base Camp – the opposite way to work. Getting from there to work (5 miles) took a WHOLE ENGLISH HOUR!!! Damn those traffic jams!!! We sat there going nowhere fast watching the fuel gauge dropping like a very heavy stone...Consequently we didn’t have time to do the early safari. OK OK we know a ton of feathers falls at the same rate as a ton of bricks or a very heavy stone!
The lunchtime safari did take place; a little later than normal but we managed to get out just in the nick of time. As we started to scan the beach a woman with two dogs was approaching the outfall pipe from the north. On the muddy area on the south side of it were two Knots. Wow Knots...they are really rare on the beach here – regularly get flocks of them flying past but as rare as rocking horse sh*t for them to be feeding along our bit of beach. Needless to say she flushed them...bloomin marvelous. Also there were two Sanderlings with only another six of the dashing little chaps along the rest of the water’s edge.
A trawl through the gulls didn’t take long as there weren’t very many but doing so we did pick up a Grey Plover and another rare wader, a Ringed Plover – the first for a very long time!
As per usual all the action was beyond our southern boundary – we wouldn’t like to say how many Oystercatchers there were but a roosting mass of them looked like a black blob on the beach with many hundreds of others feeding on the sand banks. There was a huge roost of extremely distant Cormorants too and more gulls than you could shake a stick at.
Out at sea the light was horrid although the, less snowy than yesterday, Welsh mountains and their crowning clouds were illuminated with a lovely pink tinge from the insipid winter sunshine.
Nothing spectacular to report from the open sea, indeed nothing unspectacular to report either, which just about sums up exactly how unexciting it was out there.
Far too dull for any sort of pics today.
Where to next? Will the silhouette return or has it gone for good?
In the meantime let us know what didn’t put in an appearance in your outback.
BTW the mountain, Carnedd (the dd is pronouced th) Llewellyn, photographed yesterday is about 60 miles away; just in case you were wondering...you probably weren’t.

What was it the Safari saw?

The Safari plodded out in the cold dark early morning to the melancholy winter song of Robins again today. At least it wasn’t sub-zero although there was a frost on the ground. Walking past Magpie Wood (perhaps soon to be ‘officially’ renamed as ??? Wood – you’ll have to wait for the ‘official’ decision) we saw there were at least 50 Magpies sitting in the uppermost twigs. Better was to come a few moments later when we heard the rasping call of a Snipe overhead always a good patch tick in the middle of a housing estate – it had probably come off the reservoir grassland (the reservoir is covered so no chance of any waterfowl) or the wet fields at the far side of the estate.
We moved on into the park past the White Letter Hairstreak zone, where yesterday we saw what can only be described as a strange silhouette right at the top of one of the trees. This morning it wasn’t there but a totally different ‘sort of silhouette’, of about the same size, was a little lower down in a tree not too far away – was this the same thing? Bear in mind that in this part of the park after ‘moon-set’ the only light is from Venus or distant streetlights – it’s pretty black in there!
Thinking it was interesting but not entirely sure why we continued round the patch, Frank met up with his early morning pals and a few Blackbirds chacked away in the undergrowth. Getting back to the butterfly zone and approaching from the opposite direction we could see our silhouette but again it wasn’t giving anything away. We decided to see if a closer look might give us any pointers – Damn! We flushed it and didn’t get a good look, still far too dark and it flew off through the trees away from us. But it didn’t clatter on take-off so probably not a Woodpigeon and it didn’t give an alarm or flight call so probably not a thrush – the flight was, as far as we can ascertain, silent – which leaves the possibility of a small owl...Little Owl? A waif from freezing conditions in the countryside? They used to be present in the dim and distant past... Could it be something like a Kestrel? – Do they/can they hunt when it’s that dark? We’ve only ever had one owl on the patch; an ‘eared’ owl which flew low across the main road a hundred yards or more in front of us early one morning a couple of winters ago – no chance of getting it down to species. We’re taking the bins tomorrow so fingers crossed it’s still there.
After the excitement of Patch 1 we came back down to earth with a bump – unlike the shooting star we saw last night – patch 2’ best bit was a lovely view through the scope of a snow covered Carnedd Llewellyn across the bay, at least we think it’s that mountain.

Our Extreme photographer had a crackin mountain app on his iPhone which told you the names of the nearest mountains if you held the phone in any direction. But he was last heard of heading into the desert somewhere between Darwin and Cairns...The two black dots at the bottom of the pic are Cormorants...don't say we don't photograph birds anymore!
The beach was empty save for a few Black Headed Gulls and a single Common Gull roosting in a runnel. There was much more of the usual stuff away to the south beyond our boundary. Out at sea Common Scoter numbers seemed a bit down, perhaps only abut 350 of them this morning but 10 Great Crested Grebes were nice to see, including a flock of four, two of which did a little chest to chest shimmy – their breeding season mustn’t be very far away if they are practicing already!
We could only find one distant Red Throated Diver but a close fly-past by a male Eider gave us our bird of the session.
Once again the excellent calm conditions were ruined by a complete lack of mammals.
Our lunchtime session was a pleasant enough affair with warm sunshine and no wind but there was nothing new to tell you about.

Where to next? More of the tedious same unless we can nail the mystery silhoutte.

In the meantime let us know what's silhouetted in your outback.

Lead like or Mouse ate my chainsaw – shock horror...

The Safari has been plummeting like a lead balloon on the Fatbirder rankings of late – are you lot out there totally fed up with hearing about 11 Oystercatchers, the odd Sanderling and a Robin or two...but come on; what could possibly be more exciting and entertaining than a chainsaw eating mouse?
Not to worry here we go again with the usual Oystercatcher et al drivel...Patch 1 was a fairly noisy affair long before dawn this morning with several Robins and Blackbirds making their presence felt although we stood no chance of seeing any of them. No sign of the Peregrine on the roosting ledge after it being there in the middle of the afternoon yesterday.
This morning on Patch 2 the sea was glass calm, the calmest it’s been for a long time. So calm you could see small blobs of seaweed floating about a mile offshore. It was desperately grey and ethereal out there. The flocks of Common Scoter looked as though they were hovering in the cloud rather than floating on the water; the calm conditions gave us the opportunity to see how many there are actually out there, about 500 is what we guestimated, more than there has been for a while. We were interrupted in our trawl through the scoters by several flights of Cormorants heading out to the north west, 137 of them in total, with them was a small flock of five Shelducks. Also on the sea were three Great Crested Grebes but no Red Throated Divers today. Best bird on the sea was a male Goldeneye feeding close to the end of the outfall pipe.
The beach was fortunately devoid of people but disappointingly empty of birds too. There were very few gulls knockin about, a Great Black Back was the only one of any note, and hardly a wader to be seen either. A smattering of uncounted Oystercatchers probably numbered no more than two dozen, while counts of just eight Sanderlings and three Redshanks were extremely poor by recent standards. A lone Grey Plover still pecked at invisible fragments of food on the beach, the only highlight in a very poor session of beachwatching.

Lunchtime was a little different but no better. The tide was almost in and the beach was disturbed so nothing there. At sea it wasn't as calm but we could see that most of the Common Scoters were still out there. No massive Cormorant feeding frenzy either but there were two very distant feeding flocks one of which had around 20 Great Black backed Gulls in attendance. New in were 15 Red Throated Divers scattered here and there. Still no sign of a goody and although the conditions were excellent there were no mammals.

Later we had a teaching session at the college in the north of town, close enough to twitch the Purple Sandpipers once class was over. We arrived as the light was fading and had about a 3/4 mile walk after parking at the wrong end of the prom. After what seemed like an age we spotted a bloke stood at the head of the large breakwater holding up a pair of bins. We reached him and he very generously let us hop up next to him on the rocks and he pointed out the target in the fading light,; fading light! it was almost pitch dark by now. Not the best view of Purple Sandpipers we've ever had but two in the bag for the year (190). Two weeks to get 10 - not a snowball's chance in hell!!!

Where to next? Please let there be a Caspo or a Ring Billed on the beach tomorrow...

In the meantime let us know what you've twitched after dark in your outback.

Weekend round-up

The Safari hasn't been out much over the weekend. No safaris have been undertaken at all. Neither have we managed to get any Christmas shopping in yet and time is pushing on for that m'larky.

On Saturday we managed a quick trip around Patch 1, in the light for a change, but didn't get much until we came out of the park and spotted a Meadow Pipit sat on the ridge tiles of one of the houses on the new estate - it's very unusual to find a grounded one on the patch!

Later we read that there had been a dark bellied Brent Goose on the golf course opposite the park, off patch but what a local tick that would have been! Unusual to as both 100+ strong flocks to the north and south are pale bellied Brents.

We spent much of the afternoon sawing logs. But first had to overcome a bit of Wood Mouse inflicted chainsaw damage. the little devil that lives in the garage has been on a gnawing spree and chewed at this that and the other; one of the others included the filler cap for the chain oil on the saw. How very dare it!

Wanton vandalism - that's what it is!!!

This morning's shorter Patch 1 safari gave us a Great Spotted Woodpecker on the ground, or perhaps on a fallen log, in the Golden Triangle. A Blue Tit on the feeder was a real treat as was a fly over Pied Wagtail, a fair few uncounted Chaffinches too whilst wood cutting (again - gonna be a feature of weekends from now on we think) and we're not a 100% positive we didn't hear the nasal 'chweee' call of a Brambling overhead which would have been a patch tick.

A trip to the shops ended up with a game of ball on the beach, not far from the elusive Purple Sandpiper, which meant that Frank had to go for a swim; at one point he lost sight of his ball and yours truly was almost about to strip off to retrieve it...thankfully Frank saw it and headed off in to the deep to fetch it back...a lucky escape...he's now lying by the fire steaming. There was little of note on the flat calm sea, only a handful of Turnstones flew by and a few gulls looked for titbits from the passing public, although we were optic-less. passing the water tower on the way back to Base Camp we could see one of the Peregrines sitting up on its ledge enjoying the 'warm' afternoon sunshine.

'Pool had an excellent result yesterday afternoon, with their fourth away win of the campaign. they have now won as many away as Man Utd (3rd) and Chelsea (4th) combined. They have scored 24 goals in their 16 games same as Man City (2nd) and lost few games at home than Arsenal (1st). Not only that they no longer have the leakiest defence in the Premiership, now it's joint second leakiest, which in our book is an improvement!

22 points from 16 matches gives us an end of season very healthy 52 points - keep it up boys yer doing good!!!

Where to next? A week of patchy stuff comin your way.

In the meantime let us know the score in your outback.

No consistency

The Safari woke this morning to the barmily balmy temperature of +7ºC. Just five short days ago it was a full 14 degrees colder at this time of the morning! Put into perspective if the weekend had been an ‘average’ December weekend with a night-time temperature hovering around +2ºC then this morning’s equivalent would have been 16ºC or, put another way, the same as a warm afternoon in May! What’s goin on? At least the wildlife will have some respite if it stays mild for a few more days.
Patch 1 gave us nothing in the ‘sultry heat’ until we got back to Base Camp and started hanging the laundry out, that’s when we heard the Peregrine start calling. still can’t get our head around the fact that in the darkness of a pre-dawn winter morning we can hear Peregrines in the suburbs, in fact it was the only bird recorded until a nearby Blackbird woke up and began clucking and chacking away.
It was still far too dark to nip over the road when we arrived at work so we had to do a bit while it lightened up enough. We gave it half an hour but it was still pretty dark under the glowering clouds.
It was low water and Mussel pickers had flushed everything from the favoured muddy sides to the outfall pipe, there was a Lugworm digger at our southern boundary too, so everything was neatly confined between these hominids.
Very few gulls were on the beach but one of them was an adult Lesser Black Back, same one as yesterday perhaps. We set about counting the waders and got some decent numbers; 247 Oystercatchers, 103 Sanderlings, 53 Redshanks, only eight Dunlins and one of yesterday’s Grey Plovers had done a runner as we only saw three today.
Out on the very choppy sea we noticed there were still quite a few Cormorants around and several small parties flew past southwards towards the sandbanks at the mouth of the estuary. How many there were was very difficult to judge in the large waves but we’d hazard a guess of at least 50. There was an increase in Great Black Backed Gulls though with a minimum of 20 counted. It must be worth their while to try to pinch the Cormorant’s fish but although they wheel around overhead when one comes up with something too big to swallow easily we not seen one them the steal yet.
Hanging the laundry out might well have been a mistake as we had to beat a hasty retreat from Patch 2 as a huge dark cloud started dumping rather a lot of heavy rain on us.
By now it had warmed up to a Saharan 8ºC but to be honest in the strong wind and the damp it didn’t feel any warmer than the sub-zeros we hopefully left behind now.
Out planned visit to the beach didn’t materialise as our friends from the Wildlife Trust were unfortunately derailed by the delays on their train journey so by the time they had arrived the tide had come in.

No lunchtime Patch 2 Cormorant counting safari either unfortunately. But now that the thaw has started our resident male Pied Wagtail has reappeared, he's probbably only been as far as the beach to feed during the hard weather as we often see them down by the dunes when we venture that far south.
Where to next? EBay to do some Christmas shoppin!!!
In the meantime let us know what’s to be heard when hanging out the laundry in your outback and enjoy these strangely neutrally bouyant stones in the dipping pond at work - cunning eh.