Wednesday Wander

Mid-day and it’s raining for the rest of the day. It was as well I managed a few hours birding earlier at Conder Green in the morning when the birds were pretty much a repeat of a week ago. Well we are in the doldrums of June when nothing much is on the move. 

The Avocets continue to occupy the same island as the Common Terns, but while the Avocets are eminently watchable the terns are playing hard to get. That latter might suggest the terns are close to the eggs hatching. There was a single Great Crested Grebe again today. I watched it hanging around and submerging into quite shallow water near where the male Avocet fed, just like a week ago. I came to the conclusion that the grebe was cashing in on the way the swaying motion of the feeding Avocet stirs up food from below the surface. 

Although the grebe’s diet consists mainly of fish they will eat insects and larvae including dragonflies, beetles, water bugs, flies and moths; they also take frogs, tadpoles and newts. 

Great Crested Grebe

There are still 4 Tufted Duck and 15+ Shelduck around but no sign of ducklings for either. A pair of Oystercatchers still has 2 young and although a handful of Lapwings have been around most of the spring there’s still nothing to show for their presence. I didn’t see any young Redshanks either but there was an increase to 40+ today perhaps as a result of failed and non-breeders arriving from not too far away. 

Oystercatcher

 

Two Grey Herons and a single Little Egret made up the meagre quota of herons. Swallows and House Martins were about in tens while it made a change to see a few Swifts – six in all hawking around the hedgerow and the farm buildings. 

A walk around the road and railway circuit found warblers, finches and buntings in the shape and sound of 3 Whitethroat, 4 Sedge Warbler, 1 Blackcap, 1 Lesser Whitethroat, 1 Reed Warbler, 4 Reed Bunting, 3 Linnet, 2 Goldfinch and 2 Pied Wagtails. 

Sedge Warbler

 

Sedge Warbler

Reed Bunting

Sedge Warblers have an old name of “sedge nightingale” from their habit of singing in the dark, especially when newly arrived on territory in spring. Their chattering, reeling, unmusical song is nothing like the song of a Nightingale, not that we get to hear any Nightingales here in North West England. 

Glasson Dock was quiet apart from Blackcap, 2 Whitethroat and a Grey Heron heading out over the marsh. A Lesser Black-backed Gull hung around the car park but rain was not far away.

Lesser Black-backed Gull

 

There’s more soon from Another Bird Blog. Don’t forget to pay a visit.

Linking today to Eileen's Saturday and Run A Round Ranch.