Axe Birding: A Frustrating Few Days

This could easily be a down-beat blog post, but I'm going to try my hardest to not let it go that way...

Let's start with a nice Wheatear photo, one of four that I saw yesterday...

Positive positive positive...

The Little Stint from the Tower Hide was nice yesterday too, as was meeting Mike Hill (an ex Channel Island ringer). But that was about it.

A good look round the Estuary and marshes this morning revealed the following;

45 Wigeon
190 Teal
2 Shoveler
4 Water Rail
14 Lapwing
2 Ringed Plover
9 Dunlin
1 Little Stint
75 Redshank
19 Black-tailed Godwit
16 Bar-tailed Godwit
6 Chiffchaff
3 Yellow Wagtail

No White Wags this morning, but had a couple on Black Hole Marsh over the weekend. I wasted far too much of this morning grilling this (I thought) interesting looking first-winter male Wigeon...

Sadly its underwings proved it was just an Eurasian Wigeon, but there you go, you've got to be in it to win it. Thanks to Bun for the second pair of eyes from a different angle. Not only did it waste my time, but it reminded me of the 'fun' we had over the winter of 2011/12 when a pale female Wigeon was knocking around...

http://stevesbirdingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/more-wigeon-fun.html

Right that's me done, I'll sign off with a few random photos...