What I believe to be a Kittiwake
well out of range shots in a near gale.
Deep waters
Hope the tide does,nt come in much further
- A decent start to the morning which lasted about 30 minutes then turned atrocious with front after front of driving horizontal rain blasting across from the west on a W>5 at 8 degrees.
- Some signs of movement until the rain started which stopped the show apart from LBB gulls which kept coming over throughout the watch. By 1000 hrs I up stumps and headed for home.
- On the shoreline this morning I found my 8th drowned Squirrel in the last few weeks. There are no Squirrels around this area at all , the nearest being Ogden and Castle Carr, until this time of year when several semi migrate. What I fail to understand is, why do they attempt to swim across the water when they could quite easily go around. We used to see this when we vis migged TMR where the Squirrels would swim half way across and then run out of energy and get washed back to shore. Maybe someone out there can enlighten me on this suicide mission.
- Late afternoon and back at Fly Flatts where the sun shone and the wind blew. A near gale W>7 was blowing at 32 m.p.h. which took my tripod over twice, luckily without scope or camera attached this time, once bitten,!
- As expected, things were quiet but scanning the water from the south shore a single small gull was on the water which when I got a very wobbly scope on it I believed it to be a Kittiwake with a pale mantle and wings, short dark bill and a plain white head with just a hint of a dark shadow behind the eye .
- Unfortunately a wind surfer was steaming all around the water and by the time I had dashed back through the boatyard to scope from the east bank the bird had gone so the only photos I got were the full length of the reservoir and well out of range but right time of year and right weather conditions.
- VISIBLE MIGRATION
- 47 Woodpigs................>S
- 10 Mipits.....................>S
- 71 LBB gull................>SW
- 8 Alba Wagtails..........>SE
- PRESENT
- 23 Canada geese
- 2 Greylag geese
- 2 Pied Wagtail
- 5 LBB gull
- 3 Raven
- 1 Kittiwake
- BS
