The Last Two Days

I shall start with yesterday, and I spent most the afternoon along the Estuary - where better to be when it's wet and windy!

Just so I don't bore people yet, I'll start with the waders, and I saw the Spotted Redshank (which now seems to be hanging out in front of Seaton Hide), a Common Sandpiper (drat!), three (maybe four?) Barwits still and 35 Dunlin.

Amongst the gulls I chalked up six Med Gulls, and guess what lucky blog readers?... I managed to photograph four of them...

3 ads and a second winter

A fourth adult and another second-winter remained un photographed as they were way north of Coronation Corner.

'Gavs warbler' called a few times in quick succession from the same large garden (known as Pallas's Garden to me!) that he heard it in a couple of days ago. I spent the next half an hour looking and listening for it but to no avail. Bloody bird! It did sound good, but from what I heard I couldn't rule out an Eastern(ish)/dodgy Chiffy.

And now to today, and I went down to Colyford Marsh this morning for high tide...

It was quite a high one too!

There were still 7 Greylags on the marsh, with a zillion Canada nearby. The highlight though was a very vocal Grey Plover that flew in and landed briefly beside the scrape. Nice - but not the 'Grey P' I was after...

I only had my Lumix with me, and it was raining - hence the crappy pic!

And that's about it really! Although I should take this opportunity to sum up my garden ringing over the past week. It has been good really, whenever I've had the net open I've been getting a steady flow of birds. The highlight was this...

A VERY fat 1w male Blackcap

There were many pointers as to why this was a first winter bird (aged 3), though the brown flecks visible in and around the black crown was probably the most straight forward way of telling...

Interesting to see a slight hook-tipped bill, can't say I noticed that in the hand

And that's a wrap - as they say.