Keep It Quiet

It was a week or two since I visited Conder Green, so this morning because I was up with the lark I decided to motor on up there before the Bank Holiday motorists turned off for Glasson where mooching about doing pretty much nothing is a favoured pastime.

It was so quiet early on that I heard a Mistle Thrush singing from across the main road along the river, near that other pub that I forgot the name of. Also in that direction I heard a Whitethroat in song and then a Meadow Pipit a little nearer, over the roadside marsh. Other passerines moving about were several each of Linnets and Goldfinch.

I expected both the pool and the creek to be quiet with birds, but the light was good for photographs if anything came along, so I hung around counting the comings and goings of the few resident wildfowl and waders.

I think 7 Tufted Duck is the normal count now but it wasn’t difficult to count them, along with 8 Oystercatcher, 2 sitting of them on eggs, together with 5 Shelduck and a single drake Wigeon. Down in the creek I counted 8 Redshank, 1 Curlew and 2 Grey Heron, pretty slow stuff but I was getting a few pictures in the good light and the peace and quiet without parked up HGVs with motors going or other passing traffic. I even spent a minute or so trying to photograph a Swift or two when 10 or 12 moved through early on, perhaps the biggest number I have seen in the Fylde this spring; It looks like another poor Swift year.

Swift
Grey Heron
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Shelduck
Oystercatcher

I called at a farm near Thurnham where I watched male and female Pied Wagtails visiting a nest, their bills stuffed with large amounts of food, so I decided it best not to visit the nest in case the young “exploded”. Instead I looked for evidence of breeding Lapwing and Oystercatcher and found 3 Lapwing chicks a distance away, but closer, an Oystercatcher sat tight in a field of dairy cows. Over towards Thurnham village I heard more than one Buzzard call and looked across to see two of them moving between woods, harried as always by gangs of corvids. I was near Nateby yesterday where in a single field I saw more than 240 Carrion Crows, and this before the breeding season is over. Is it any wonder we lose so early lots of ground nesting birds when these gangsters are forever on the lookout?

Braides Farm next where our dry spring did nothing to help the land enhancements aimed at helping breeding waders. But I hear that a second phase of work will take place, so fingers crossed for next year.

One pair of Lapwings had young, distant over towards the gorse, too far to trek while I remained so visible to the parents, and 2 Oystercatchers sat watchful on distant posts. There were a few Linnets and Goldfinch here, plus 3 Skylark and at least 2 pairs of Meadow Pipit. I swear one bird was so intent on watching the parachutists it didn’t notice me approach quietly and take a portrait.

Meadow Pipit


Buzzard