Cool, cloudy, W5 - It was a miserable morning of cooler weather along with occasional pulses of drizzle driven on by a brisk westerly for our morning Ted outing across the peninsula. We started at Lade where up to 200 Pochards and 100 Tufted Ducks sheltered from the wind at the south end of both lakes with at least 50 Great Crested Grebes attracted to the baulks of flowering Canadian pond weed. The small island that normally appears in late summer at the south end of south lake is now visible (at least a month early) and briefly harboured a returning Common Sandpiper, my first of the autumn passage. As is typical in such windy weather hundreds of Swifts and House Martins hawked insects over the water. A dead adult Great Crested Grebe on the causeway shingle showed no obvious signs of its demise, but it did seem a strange location to find one...
Moving onto Kerton quarry where two more Common and a Green Sandpiper confirmed that the wader passage is underway, along with a group of 20 Lapwings on the main island. Loads more Swifts swooped over ARC as we crossed the causeway road en-route to the bird reserve where four Grey Plovers on Burrowes included a cracking adult bird in breeding plumage. I counted at least six sitting Common Terns on the smallest shingle island in front of Dennis`s where the hide is now being used for a trial period until August for birders with `well-behaved dogs`; and I`m pleased to report that Ted received plenty of praise from the visitors in the hide this morning. Now, I fully appreciate that not everyone is a dog-lover and personally I will be checking whether anybody has an aversion to dogs before entering the hide with Ted. But for now thanks to the RSPB for trying something different.
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