Shelduck at Bow Creek, February 2011
With the recent run of mild weather seemingly firmly established with no sign of a change visits to the patch before the spring migration kicks in are a triumph of hope over expectation, and today was no different except that I very rarely time a visit to coincide with a falling tide so I thought I'd give it a go. Two pairs of Shelduck were at Bow Creek along with around 160 Common Teal, most of these were paired up and numbers will steadily drop from now on as they head north to their breeding grounds, although a cold snap could produce one last big winter count; the only other wildfowl of note was a flock of 22 Tufted Duck on the basin. A few hundred gulls were feeding on the exposed mud at Bow Creek, mostly Black-headed Gulls, around 400 with smaller numbers of Common and Herring Gulls including a probable Scandinavian Herring Gull, darker mantled and with more white in the wings. Passerine interest was negligible with several of the commoner species in song including Dunnock, Wren and Blue Tit but oddly no thrushes.
No comments:
Post a Comment