Sunday 18 December 2016

Galloways Again!

A gloomy wind less early morning at the fishing boats, on flat calm sea a feeding frenzy of c50 Gannets plunging in among c200 Cormorants, c20 Guillemots and a few Great-crested Grebes. In half an hour 44 Red-throated Divers flew down channel and 5 up, apart from these little else seemed to be moving.
 Bewick Swans leaving the ARC this morning
18 Bewick Swans left the ARC to go to Walland to feed. The Long-eared Owl was back at the Dipping Pool this morning and 1w Kittiwake was on Burrowes. The Ring-necked Duck moved to the ARC today and 2 Goosander also there per RO.
Red-throated Divers past Galloways
As there has been no firing on the ranges for the last few days, I decided to walk along the beach from Galloways towards The Midrips, someone has to make the sacrifice. Off shore Red-throated Divers were much in evidence tooing and froing which was just as well as in 2.5 hrs on the beach and salt marsh apart from the Gulls I saw the grand total of 2 Meadow Pipits, a single Redshank and a Kestrel.
Late afternoon from the viewing ramp on the reserve 5 Marsh Harriers flew through, as did 2 Common Buzzards and a Raven. A Bittern gave a brief flyby, Bearded Tits, a Kingfisher and Cetti's Warblers were present. A wren entertained with peculiar behaviour on the Bearded Tits grit tray by rolling in and covering its self in the grit. A brief adrenalin rush occurred when I was scanning through a flock of c500 Lapwing I picked out a pale buffy coloured individual. I quickly changed the 30x for a 60x zoom through which I could see the bird was just a leucistic Lapwing.

4 comments:

  1. You need to stop being a martyr to the midrips. It's not gonna pay you back!!!

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  2. I think your right Chris, its just the habitat looks so good there.

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  3. The odd thing is there are lots of old records of good birds there, what has changed?

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  4. Chris, I can only think its due to more intensive use by the military, also severe pollution of the water from ordnance, even Cormorants and Herons aren't seen on the pools so one can assume that crustaceans and fish are not to be found there in any abundance. Apparently in the 60s & 70s ringers were able to trap many waders there.

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