Curlew Sandpipers

Rain overnight coupled with a fairly strong south easterly veering southerly wind, encouraged me to spend a few hours out before work this morning.

Thankfully there were more enthusiastic birders than me about and a quick scroll of my WhatsApp messages before I'd left the house informed me the sea probably wasn't worth my time (thanks James!). So straight to Black Hole Marsh it was...

Here I was really surprised to come across two absolutely stonking Curlew Sandpipers, feeding at times with, but also at times completely separate from the 11 Dunlin also on the marsh.  They remained fairly close to Tower Hide but the light was poor whilst I was there.  Am glad they stayed the day though so many others could enjoy them.

A Blackwit sandwich with Curlew Sand-bread!  Two absolute crackers!

Such a size difference between the two, so presumable female on left and male on right!  

Although we can get spring birds occasionally well into June, these are the earliest autumn birds recorded on the patch that I know of.  Looking through my records the previous earliest autumn Curlew Sand here was on 4th August, back in 2014 on Black Hole Marsh.  So these might well be the first July records? 

Top birds!  And more than enough to get me out of the summer birding doldrums

 

Another autumn first for me this morning - about a month early - was an eclipse drake Wigeon on the Estuary.  It's so early that I actually wonder if it ever left!? A female lingered well into May on Seaton Marshes but don't think I saw a male later than is expected.

Remained distant!

 

Also this morning it was nice to see my first grounded juvenile Med Gull of the autumn.  I saw my first juvenile of the autumn exactly a week ago, but it flew straight down the Estuary and out to sea.  I have not had any big numbers or decent passages of Meds yet, despite over a hundred on the Exe recently.  Hopefully we've not missed them all! 

Hello cutey!

It's been a while since I last posted about birds, but I don't really have much to fill you all in on.  The sea has remained really quiet except small numbers of Manx Shearwater, and in the river valley it's been the same selection of wading birds just in varying numbers.  

There's clearly been some hirundine migration over the last few weeks as I have seen small fast-moving groups of Swallows and Sand Martins sporadically flying over.  Also a few days ago I saw the first noticeable gathering of House Martins feeding overhead under a layer of low cloud, which looked amazing over the house!  Swifts have thinned out as to be expected, I had 50 over the house at the start of the month one morning but have seen no more than 15 on any day in the last week.  

Two Common Sands from BHM last week, included here as shows difference nicely between a young bird (near) and adult bird (far)

Black-tailed Godwits have been showing well lately

Let's hope there is more rain on the way - the two brick red beauties today proving just how quickly the wet stuff can deliver the goods!