Friday 31 July 2015

Wood Sandpipers

Lade - cool, cloudy, se 2 - Another wretched night in the Plovers moth trap with only 35 macros of 18 species, but did include Ruby Tiger and Brown-line Bright Eye new for the year - not to be confused with Bright-line Brown Eye of course, which I try not too, but still cannot get my head round those two similar names.., plus a very drowsy Migrant Hawker.

                                     Brown-line Bright Eye

                                Migrant Hawker

                                Ruby Tiger

Scotney - Spent most of the morning wandering around out back amongst the smoking linseed (I thought that practise had been banned...) and corn fields scanning harriers of which there was at least five individual Marsh, plus several Buzzards and Kestrels. All the expected farmland passerines noted and it was good to see a number of juvenile Yellow Wagtails in the sheep folds.
On the gravel pits, front and back, a combined tally of ten Dunlins, eight Curlews, five Common Sandpipers and Avocets, two each of Little Ringed Plover and Whimbrel, a Green Sandpiper along the main sewer and a Wood Sandpiper that flew over calling before settling at the Sussex end. The two Spoonbills were still present and at least five fledged Black-headed Gulls sat on an island being attended to by adults. Amongst the hundreds of feral geese and swans were three Egyptian Geese and four Snow Geese types, while a Little Owl was slumped asleep in the roof of a barn.

        Barney enjoying farmland birding, he reckons it beats seawatching any day...

                                Egyptian Goose, Scotney

                                Linseed burn-off, Cheyne Court

                                Sunbathing Starlings, Scotney

ARC - At the allotment House Martins were picking up mud from puddles to repair nests on the eaves of the adjacent housing estate, where there appeared to be young in at least three nests that I could see.
From Hanson hide a smart Wood Sandpiper and a Ruff were busily feeding on the closest island, alongside 150 Lapwings, six Blackwits and four Little Ringed Plovers.

                                Wood Sandpiper, ARC

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