Thursday 24 February 2011

Wader movement

It seems as though the only regular birding I do is surveying at Buckenham and Cantley these days. The past few weekends I have been busy in Essex and the previous weekend it rained and I worked.
So today, Buckenham and Cantley, lots of birds around as always but there were subtle changes in number and a few returning species.

Totals for the day included;

5080 Wigeon
4511 Lapwing
1260 Pink footed geese
63 Shovler
571 Teal
93 Curlew
109 Dunlin
16 Ruff
1 Pintail

So loads more Curlew and Dunlin than normal sybolising a change of season?
Other incoming species included 2 pairs of Oystercatcher a few Redshank and a tufted Duck. I know it sounds very uninteresting to coastal birders but its a sure sign of change inland.
Also had a Jack Snipe on Buckenham yesterday which is a year tick. We saw it fly and land in a ditch in front of us, after having a careful look on the ground where I thought it went down there was no sign until we started moving and it was about a metre in front of me! how are they so invisible, typically it flushed straight away as if it were aware that eye contact had been made.

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