It wasn’t exactly twitching because Monday is collecting Olivia from school, so a detour to Fleetwood Marine Lake to look for the Great Northern Diver of yesterday wasn’t out of the way. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
The driving rain of the morning continued as I made my way down to the western end of the lake. The water was choppy and the bird wary of powered boats that kept shooting across to the island and back from the Nautical College headquarters. The light and the rain were so bad I switched to ISO 1600 and got a few bad shots.
The photograph below, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service, shows what a Great Northern Diver look like in the summer in North America where the bird is known as Common Loon.
Also on the lake were 11 Red-breasted Merganser, 3 Goldeneye and 2 Cormorant, with 40 Redshank and 70 Turnstone around the area of the model boat pools. I had left my car at the car park where Turnstones hang out for food that locals throw to the Mute Swans and gulls, and as the rain poured down I took a few shots from the car.
The weather forecast for this week is absolutely awful, rain and wind, then more wind and rain, with just a slim chance of a birding window on Wednesday – here’s hoping.
