Friday, August 20, 2010

Moore Groundhogging...



Day 3 of the patch quintuplet and things are... well...  sunshine, showers and a certain degree of similarity...

Halfway House 15:00

Quiet here today. The hoped for Greenshank melingering seems not to be on the cards and instead the only waders are Curlew and Lapwing - but what numbers of the latter! Max count for the year...1485! Curlew on the other hand are sparse... just five. There is only 1 Little Egret herentoday, feeding along side roosting Canada Geese. These have shot up since my last visit... there are 196 today sandwiching the group of 10 Cormorants sharing the mud-roost with them. Lesser Black-backed Gull numbers are also up (2850 today), so too Black-headed Gulls I think (355) but I count only a solitary Great Black-backed and just 2 Herring Gull. A Great Crested Grebe on the river is another new addition since last week though as are 5 Shelduck near Wigg island and there are still a couple of Swallows zipping about, but no Sand Martins.


Pumphouse Pool 16:15

Well, the news today is that there's only 1 Greens Sandpiper on the pool-within-the-pool today but the female Garganey is still in attendance. Numbers of everything else is as follows; Gadwall 12, Shoveler 4, Little Grebe 4, Coot 37 (a new max I think...), Tufty 9, Mallard 45 (up???) Moorhen 5 and Teal 16. There's also a Raven just flown north mobbed by 2 Jackdaw... hmmm.

Black Fields 17:15

3 Green Sandpiper. Well that's quite interested as the max on Pumphouse had been four but there's regularly been a single there. SO, looks like a single and a trio on the patch...nice.

Birchwood Pool 17:30

Rain has been threatening for a while (the odd spot of drizzle earlier) and is now falling as I head to the east hide. General impression is of things being similar to my last visit about a week ago maybe... 112 Coot, 3 Mute Swan, 6 Little Grebe (incl. 2 juvs), 23 Mallard, 2 Pochard, 28 Gadwall, 46 Canada Geese, 2 Greylag Geese, and SEVEN white 'domestics'... OK, maybe there are a  few things different. There are 29 adult Tuftys plus 2 broods of 4 full grown and 9 x 3/4 grown respectively... both along the west shore, 4 Moorhen (1 with a brood of 2 x 1/3grown young), 2 Great Crested Grebes and... and... that's it.



Pumphouse Pool revisited 18:00ish

Bumped into Den and Mal on way out and decided to give PHP another look and try to find the Garganey again. No problem. She actually put on quite a nice show. Also added Green Woodpecker again, Peregrine on its usual spot and a Common Buzzard. SO... all in all, not a bad couple of hours really. Early door on the river tomorrow... looking forward to that ;)

2 comments:

  1. Dude, sounds like you are enjoyng being back on the patch! We had a juv/fem Garganey at Gilroy on Sun, but not since. Any metal festval related injuries/anecdotes?

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  2. Oh yes I am indeed best birding chum. Garganey is now on Day 4 and had a cracking morning on the river today (blog to follow shortly). As for the metal mayhem, no injuries but plenty of anecdotes lol. Shame you're not on facebook... pix say it all... and some :D

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