Barry Docks – two Med gulls, three GBBs and two Stonechat

Barry Old Harbour – a Little Egret and 16 Redshank

The Knap – Glacous gull

Sully Beach – six Grey Plover and a Black Redstart

Cosmeston – Lesser Scaup, female Wigeon, 3 Teal, Marsh Tit and a Raven

(and a probable Brambling by the entrance to The Medieval Village)

 

Bittern showed well for a few minutes at 12:35 – also 5 Wigeon, 6 Teal and 3 Snipe in addition to earlier sightings, Chiff Chaff still hanging around the concrete path close to the Med Village entrance.

GN Diver 1 (photo), RT Diver 3 (in one group) and 20 Kittiwake (one group of 8 ad and 4 fw)

This one flew in quietly, rustled around in the seaweed for 10 minutes, then departed down channel with a 7 note farewell in the style of a Little Grebe. My Iphone did well to capture even these record shots in the dull drizzle.

An interesting 90 minutes – Three Pomarine Skuas within 20 minutes of arriving, followed by two bruising Bonxies – and it hardly stopped raining for a minute – hence the poor (but interesting) record shot. Shame the rain meant Andy Burns had to leave his camera in it’s case.

A rainy two hours between 10am and noon saw us taking refuge in the old shelter at St maryswell bay – Graham Smith and I were rewarded with decent views of two Bonxies, a dark phase Pomerine skua, a Little Egret and a handful of Kittiwake.

 

Just had a call from John Wilson who is on his way to Cosmeston now (4pm 23rd Oct)

Managed to catch up with the Short-eared Owl this morning – roosting at the base of a Hawthorn hedge at the top of the big stubble field. Also male Stonechat, 30 Skylark, 2 Kestrel, Peregrine, 3 chiff-chaff and at least 30 swallows

Two Goshawks went over just as I was leaving – originally saw one and expected it to be a Buzzard as it came in high over the channel, travelling north, pestered by a much smaller Carrion Crow – soon saw the long tail and different profile and realised it was a Goshawk. Then noticed a 2nd identical bird travelling in parallel with it but much higher – never seen that before? – left it too late to get a photo and couldn’t get it to focus on the dot in the sky 🙂 also kestrel, peregrine, sparrowhawk (2), chiff-chaff (2), blackcap, skylark (7), linnet (100), Goldfinch (50), Swallow (200) House martin (10), Meadow pipit, chaffinch, jay etc

Highlight today was a Hobby doing a full aerobatic routine for about 5 minutes. Peregrine and a female Kestrel completed a falcon trio. Swallows were well down – max of 50 with only 5 House Martins but 4 very vocal chiff-chaffs, 4 skylarks, a Blackcap, Green Woodpecker, a Mistle thrush and 7 pied wagtails were the only others of note.

Managed to get out for an hour – Swallow numbers well down – estimated about 100 and only ONE House Martin – A Firecrest was in the travelling party of long-tailed tits and a male Yellowhammer on the wires both seen from my usual spot. Kestrel, Buzzard, Skylark (10), Mistle Thrush (8), Great Spotted Woodpecker and Green Woodpecker made it all interesting.

I got a speculative shot of a bird in the bush where I saw the Firecrest – but can’t even be sure if this was the same bird 🙂

Another interesting morning. Three Red Kites turned up at 11am and hung around for a while.

About an hour later as I was driving through Sully I saw two over the road – presumably the same birds.

Swallows moving through at a rate of about 1000 an hour for two hours this morning, together with maybe 100 sand martins, a few Grey Wagtails and the first Skylark of the autumn. Still a few warblers around including a Lesser Whitethroat. A notable rarity for Lavernock was a Nuthatch (my second in the last few weeks) and a new bird for the area for me, a Ruff, went through quite quickly. The Ruff looks like a juvenile male to me, in the (not surprisingly) grainy photos that Andy Burns managed to get.

Two adult winter Med Gulls this morning

After checking the rocks for over a week with no success, I finally caught up with the Grey Plover at lunchtime today – 4 of them 🙂

A nice crisp morning so decided to spend an hour on my local beach – waders were hard to connect with – other than Oystercatchers(10), Curlew (20) and Turnstone – did get a brief glimpse of one in flight that might have been a Purple Sandpiper but too fast to be sure – Grey Heron being mobbed, Grey Wagtail showing off but no Grey Plover today. A Little Egret dropped in briefly and the Rock Pipits, Pied Wagtail and Linnets made themselves heard. The highlight was this Adult Winter Med Gull – my second of the year already, and having no ring must be a different bird to the one I saw at Cosmeston

I thought I had found a female American Wigeon this morning – I knew there were two types of female Eurasian Wigeon – rufous and grey – but it wasn’t until I got home that I found (courtesy of Steve Madge) that there was an intermediate between the two – now I am not so sure.

Marsh Tit showing well in Cogan Wood this morning and Great Northern Diver showing well by the sails in the bay.