Thursday 7 November 2013

No Head for High Tides

Had a good stroll around the patch late morning culminating with a trawl along the seawall on the incoming tide.
Freeman's Pools were pretty quiet with just 27 mallard, 5 gadwall, 1 wigeon, 7 coot, 2 moorhen and a little egret visible.
The stubble fields were full of geese, specifically c280 greylag. I could only find a single pinkfoot among them, plus the fenc-hopper snow goose (and that white barnyard thing).
I couldn't see or hear any tree sparrows - 'lots' were reported from here yesterday on the LDBWS site! Not sure how many that means, but anything into double figures is generally pretty significant for Aldcliffe.
A couple of reed buntings were among the chaffinches and a flock of around 18 skylark was notable.
Frog Pond, Darter Pool, Wildfowlers' Pools and the Flood were all pretty quiet bar the odd mallard, moorhen, redshank, etc.
Aldcliffe Marsh wasn't too thrilling either with the usual scattering of curlew, lapwing, redshank, grey heron, little egret and the common gull species. There were no yellow-billed swans among the numerous mutes and I couldn't locate anything of note mingling with the 80ish greylags and 200+ Canada geese.
Passerines feeding in the tide rack included 22 pied wagtail, 9 meadow pipit and 3 rock pipit. The twite seen here by birders yesterday were nowhere to be found, unfortunately.
Tideline stiffs included a headless heron, a headless common gull and an immaculate, if somewhat dead, red fox.

Jon

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