Lapwing Quiz; The Results

So here's the original photo, which I gave people 15 seconds to look at before making their guesstimates of how many Lapwing are on the shingle island...

A total of fifteen replies gave answers varying from 226 to 900. And a quick calculation of these revealed the mean answer to be 496, which is precisely 29 less than the correct answer of 525...

Thanks to all who got involved with the fun and well done to the closest two; @hjwright99 with 521 and @alexmxck with 520. You win exactly nothing, but hold your heads high....well unless you cheated of course!

I took this photo on Saturday when there were at least 1,500 Lapwing on Black Hole Marsh, it was completely crammed full of them...

Along with a Greenshank, about 30 Snipe and 26 Dunlin...

Roosting Dunlin

Off the beach there's still four Common Scoter, plus yesterday a group of five Red-throated Divers flew west whilst I happened to be watching (well chatting to Roger actually!). I have been checking the gulls on the Estuary whenever I've had the chance, sadly no further sign of Gav's Caspian with nothing else of note either.

A Counting Conundrum and Cattle Egret

So what are your counting skills like? Or estimating skills I should say... We popped into Greendale Farm Shop today (along the A3052 near Westpoint) and I was astonished to see the number of Linnets feeding in a neighboring field. I estimated 500 birds when I quickly counted this flock perched up, but what do you think?

I'll post the answer in a blog post on Sunday night, but before that I'd love to read your guesstimates. And I don't mean sit there and count them one by one, take a quick look, count them like you would a large flock of moving birds in the field, and let me know what number you come up with. Be so interesting to see the variation in responses. Is my 500 bang on the money, or would you go higher or lower?

I've been off work this week, and for the last few nights have been trying to get to grips with the Egret roost, but I've kept missing them! They keep switching sides, one night roosting on the Borrow Pit then the next night roosting in Axmouth - and I kept picking the wrong side!  Tonight finally I was in the right spot, and at Axmouth one Cattle Egret (which I reckon is a wintering bird that's been with us since Nov 2017, just been spending the day time north of the patch) and 48 Little Egrets came into roost.

Also tonight there were good numbers of large gulls on the lower Estuary at dusk. Sadly there was nothing better in them than this dodgy looking third-winter (I think) hybrid-type...

And lastly, Sue Murphy saw the two Musbury Hawfinch this afternoon, both from the car park near the Church.  Delighted that someone else has managed to catch up with them.

Right then, get guesstimating folks...