Avocets Galore!

After having a decent afternoon down the marshes yesterday I headed out at 9am this morning in the hope that some of the goodies would still be here. Most of them were plus a few new birds too. My totals of the most interesting birds of the day are as follows:

11 Avocet
8 Pintail
4 Gadwall
2 Bar-tailed Godwit
1 Grey Plover

When I arrived at Black Hole Marsh there were only 2 Avocet but before long I spotted another 9 flying in at 09:35 bringing the total up to 11. As far as I'm aware that's a record for the patch here (will no doubt be corrected if need be). All 11 looked settled and were still there when I left, with some on the estuary and some remaining on BHM. Next locally decent bird was a Bar-tailed Godwit which I saw in flight only, heading North of Tower Hide and at a similar time the lingering Grey Plover flew downstream over the other side of the estuary. With Colyford Marshes still quite flooded I stayed in Tower Hide for a while and got some great views of some of the Avocets:

The group of 9 which landed slightly too far away from the initial 2 to squeeze all 11 into one shot

Once the water levels had dropped a bit I headed to Colyford Marshes hoping for some of yesterdays ducks to still be there. 8 Pintail and 4 Gadwall were on the main pool of water and the males of both species were displaying; great to see. I really like Pintails, such stunning birds (well, mainly the males).

I had one more scan of the estuary at dusk and was rewarded with another Barwit with 2 from Coronation Corner. Like yesterday I was heading home from the gym so I phone-binned an awful photo of the Barwits. Phone-binning in moderate wind and rain was an interesting exercise; the result of which can be seen somewhere near the top of my Twitter feed on the side of this blog...

I forgot to include this in the post yesterday but there were still lots of Hawfinches around St Andrew's Church in Colyton. They've frequently been feeding on the ground over the last couple of weeks, both in the church grounds and nearby gardens. Great stuff! Must get down and have another count up soon; it'd be nice to hit the 20s.