Wednesday 20 May 2015

Fine phalarope

Like most wetland sites along the east coast we seem to be having a very poor spring for waders. So far we haven't recorded a wood sand this year and currently there hasnt been a ruff in May! Black tailed godwits have been non-existent along with dunlin. Water levels have been perfect for the last month so at least that reason can be ruled out ;-)

With a slight change in the wind direction, this week things have started to pick up with 2 Temminck's stints, a movement of tundra ringed plovers, 2 little stints and 5 little gulls.

Things improved further this morning when a radio message came through of a red necked phalarope on the fresh marsh. Having been too busy to go straight out for the stints (unlike others) I did dash down to check this one. The guy who found it actually saw it fly in from the east and drop down in front of him!
Despite the poor morning light, the bird showed well only 30m from the path but got increasingly mobile and spent most of its time in the middle of the marsh.
The light was very poor but I did manage to get a couple of poor phonescope record shots

No comments:

Post a Comment