Okay so perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. I found the nice adult Curlew Sandpiper on Saturday morning but yesterday 9 juvs joined it! That's an unprecedented number for here and an amazing sight. Not much time to blog so this is just a quick one; I've had a brilliant couple of days on patch. Beer Head seemed like the place to be this weekend so I headed up there before the others yesterday morning and was rewarded with Wheatear, Whinchat, Tree Pipit, Willow Warbler, Spotted Flycatcher and Pied Flycatcher. I then briefly popped over to Black Hole Marsh after eating my 2nd breakfast and timed it to perfection by complete chance. A pale juv Black Tern was grounded and distantly viewable from Island Hide. I tried again late afternoon as Steve Waite sent out the message of there being 10 Curlew Sandpiper, and managed some frustratingly distant pics of them, as well as of a juv Turnstone which was new in. Last bit of excitement of the day for me was 2 Hobby which were dive-bombing over the estuary!
Now onto today... I went to Black Hole Marsh for my usual 6am slot to try and get better views; they were still distant but it was nice to see another Cuckoo. I quickly sent out the message as I thought it looked like a different bird, seemingly younger than the one I posted about a couple of weeks ago. I saw it again this evening but it was still distant which didn't help to decipher any differing characteristics between this and the previous one. It'd been 10 days since the last sighting so chances our mine was a new one anyway. I have dozens of pics to post but haven't got time to sort them out at the moment- too many birds about to warrant staying in on the computer sorting out pics! Here's one though.
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| 2 Curlew Sandpiper |
Tim, no way can you call that Black Tern distant mate - that was close!! As for the Cuckoo, only saw it briefly and in flight so far and to me it looked more rufous than the first juv (a greyer bird).
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