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 ;)