So many birds!

Bit overdue as it has been a busy few days; I've managed to squeeze in a fair bit of birding & photography recently. The juvenile Osprey has continued to show well, as has at least 1 Marsh Harrier and a Wood Sandpiper. I spotted a very distant egret sp. flying in high from the north on Tuesday (27th) morning and I thought it was probably a Great (White). Fortunately it did the decent thing and landed on the estuary where it afforded good views for over an hour, a relatively long time for a Great Egret here. This is likely the same bird that was seen at Chard Reservoir earlier that morning. Also on the 27th there was what was almost certainly a 2nd Osprey. There was a huge flush from BHM and the estuary at around 1pm and Sue & I figured an Osprey or something else large must have gone overhead without any of us seeing it from inside the hide. Moments later Steve Waite tweeted that he had an Osprey fly in from west so this mostly fits the bill, but as Steve later said, that was a long way away from the birds which flushed! Maybe they were just on high alert? A few others in the hide said it must have been a false alarm as we didn't see anything but a massive flush like that is certainly not a false alarm! We just couldn't see what caused it.

Onto today and I was up early in the hope of seeing the Osprey before having a general look around. It eventually showed, but a fair bit later than normal, and then proceeded to fly high out to sea and then west towards Beer Head so I figured it may be leaving us in favour of somewhere else along the coast. It returned in the afternoon and caught 2 fish, however.

A later visit to BHM yielded a few new birds. Dad and I were scanning the marsh from The Lookout and I spotted 3 Ruff and a Curlew Sandpiper, our first of the autumn of both species as far as I'm aware. We then went to Island Hide where another couple of people were also looking at them and we soon saw that there were in fact 3 Curlew Sands, including a colourful adult. Shortly after this I spotted a Knot, so a very good evening indeed.

I'll save it for another post but we also have some Long-tailed Blue butterflies near the mouth of the Rive Axe. I've only seen one of them so far so must pay them another visit.

There are a few pics to post when I have time to look at them, but here's a taster. A silly/tight crop of the Osprey when it flew by quite close and in nice light: