Wednesday 22nd February: Merganser Still

A rather windy and overcast day today on the Meadow. A gull that flew in trailing a long string of plastic behind it managed to freak out all the gulls this evening which then went up on mass and thereafter were extremely skittish. This in turn made the rest of the birds more wary so there was a lot of movement whilst I was there. The RED-BREASTED MERGANSER was still around and is attracting a lot of interest: yesterday one person twitched it and this evening four birders were there for it, for either their county life or at least county year lists. Fortunately the bird co-operated and came in some time after 5 p.m. together with about 8 GOOSANDER. There were 3 SHELDUCK about this evening - they may be roosting regularly but normally coming in rather late because 4 were reported early morning a couple of days ago though I hadn't seen them the previous evening. On the wader front the 3 RUFF were still about together with 2 DUNLIN and a single REDSHANK. In amongst the gulls the common gull was present for the third evening and I found one dark-winged large gull which could have been a YELLOW-LEGGED GULL though I only saw it asleep with its head tucked in so couldn't be certain.

In my garden the blackcap is still around and there's been a male bullfinch around for the last couple of days, which is quite a rarity for my garden.

Here's another ruff - one can't have too many ruff photos!

No comments:

Post a Comment