A day affected by heavy showers. I started by sea-watching in promising conditions with moderate south westerlies and poor visibility which often brings birds closer to the shore. There was a good passage of Common Terns and Sandwich Terns with a single Little Tern. A female Eider was close offshore and six Common Scoter headed east before settling on the sea. What looked like an Osprey appeared to be heading over from the Isle of Wight. My view became obscured by branches as I was nestled in the hawthorns to shelter from the wind and rain, unfortunately, when I moved position I couldn’t then relocate it, very frustrating. The sun came out, visibility increased, the Isle Of Wight appeared from the murk and seabird passage dried up, no skuas today.
I headed off to check the Little Ringed Plovers and was pleased to see the female on the nest incubating. Over on Gv Marsh there were still four Lapwing chicks. On Gt Marsh water levels weren’t quite so high as Adam had removed a sluice board earlier this morning. There were 10 Avocet with five of them sitting on eggs.
The Garden Warbler was still singing in the beach house scrub and I managed a few record shots.
Garden Warbler
I decided to head back to the car through the gorse bushes. I don’t usually go this way as you pass a Larson Trap and it always has a Magpie in it. It was to be a good decision as I flushed a female Nightjar from near Gv Mire, a really unexpected highlight and a patch tick.
I met up with Dimitri and we headed off to the hides. As we were approaching B Water Gate I saw the White-tailed Eagle flying low over JV. Dimitri shouted there’s two of them, I wrongly assumed that he was mistaking a Buzzard as a 2nd eagle and was amazed to see there were indeed two eagles in the air! They began to circle over JV island and so we headed down the track towards JV. They weren’t on show when we arrived but we soon picked up one flying low on to Wigeon Fields and the second bird soon joined it.
White-tailed Eagles
For the next 30 minutes they loafed in the sun while a brave Carrion Crow pulled at their tail feathers and the Greylags wandered dangerously close. They are G408 and G393. G408 is a 2020 male and G393 is the eagle we have been seeing regularly around the Gs area and which I first saw six weeks ago. The now ‘resident’ G393 is a 2019 male and may well have established a territory here.
I collected some footage from a Trail Camera I’ve set up. I’d captured a female and male Roe Deer, the male walking 20 seconds behind the female.
Roe Deer, male following the female
On DL’O there were 8 Avocets of which six appeared to be sitting on nests, including Gt Marsh this makes 11 sitting birds altogether. There were six Black-tailed Godwit on the scrape and a late Grey Plover called overhead. The eagles made another brief appearance dropping into land on what appeared to be the fence line near the Black-headed Gull rafts on DL’O lagoon.
I pulled over at the Reedy Ditch and watched 20 House Martins and 10 Swallows before I headed home.
Patch Birding 