Wintery WeBS

An early start this morning for this months WeBS count saw me heading into work with light snow falling!! Thankfully it didn't last long and by the time is had got light (slight mis-calculation with the time) the sun was coming up and despite the easterly wind, it was very pleasant. With two of the counters away this month it was up to me and Phil to split up an area that 4 people normally do. Phil had the lagoons and reedbed and I did the beach and saltmarsh.

Things got off to a good start with two adult whooper swans on the fresh marsh but by the time I got down to the beach the tide had already started to drop. The first thing was to see where the biggest number of birds were roosting and start there, Brancaster creek it was. There was a good number of gulls and over 300 oystercatcher but not a great deal else so it was up to Thornham Point. Although not massive numbers of birds on the face of it, by the time I had got to the point I had counted just over 1000 sanderling, a good count for us. The counting process wasn't helped by a fine male peregrine flying along the beach and flushing everything!!
Apart from a few pintail, the saltmarsh was very quiet but I did catch up with 31 twite flying along the dunes as I walked back.

25 lapwing over the village on the way hope to the patch list to 52 spp, 53 points.



A couple of 'arty' black and white photos of the beach and saltmarsh from this morning. I'm not sure how I set the camera to B&W but they looked better than in colour!!