I have missed another two Wheatears over the last few days, however early this afternoon I finally managed to connect with my first proper spring migrant of the year. Just after 1pm I was delighted to see a pristine male Little Ringed Plover on the main scrape at Bridge Marsh...
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| Distant views from the road, but still clearly a cracker |
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| A slightly better shot of it. Clearly been a nice little arrival of these into the UK today. |
Also on Bridge Marsh, having first been found yesterday by Mike B, were three Egyptian Geese. They were as distant as the LRP, however as they are much bigger and uglier there are a few more pixels of them...
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| Reminded me of my first ones on the Axe, which we are about two weeks off being 19 years ago! These were also a three, I watched them fly in on 29th March 2006 and land on Bridge Marsh. |
Anyway, I thought Egyptian Geese was as whacky as it was going to get today. However as I was watching these I got a text from Phil to say there were two Mandarin on the sea off Spot On!
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| Note the two dots bottom right! |
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| Pelagic Mandarins (in dreadful light conditions!) |
As crazy as these were they also reminded me of a former March sighting. Tim Wright found three Mandarin on the sea off the beach on 4th March 2019, which I twitched and posted about HERE. It can't be a condidence surely, is March the time of year to see Mandarins at sea!? Any other patch birders out there with records to support this? It would make sense that they are moving to breeding sites around about now I presume.
A small flock of Mandarin flying past on a seawatch would be even more bizarre looking. One for next March maybe?
Hi Steve
ReplyDeleteYet to get one offshore myself but of eight Warren records of Mandarin, four were between 20th March - 24th April, two of those pairs on the sea.
The other four records are all between 28th October - 7th November, including eight offshore on 6th November 2010. You might not have to wait until March...