We had a
lovely sunny morning with a high tide and a gentle northerly wind for our group
of 14.
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| Bearded Tit - female |
The species
highlight of the morning for many of the group was a female Bearded Tit feeding
in the reeds in Butts Lagoon and skillfully spotted by Chris. Although it was
quite windy by then and there was a lot of movement in the vegetation, the bird
stayed fairly static feeding on a seed head which enabled us all to have good
long views through the telescopes.
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| Ruff - male |
Another
species that we don’t often see was Ruff, with four individuals on the marsh to
the north of the Old Tip, a couple of them with very white collar plumage which
may have been the early stages of the spectacular male breeding ‘ruff’.
Our total
of 47 bird species was reasonable but more notable was the number of individual
birds in some of the flocks. The Lapwing were particularly skittish, taking to
the air in great numbers several times at different stages of the morning.
Sometimes they were accompanied by hundreds of Golden Plover seen at their best
when the sun was on them as they turned and whirled high in the sky.
 |
| Peregrine |
Flying
lower, keeping just above the water out towards the Solent, was a ‘fling’ of Dunlin – smaller birds than
the plovers but equally impressive with their ever-changing aerial display
recalling a murmuration of Starlings! The reason for this disturbance was
obvious when a Peregrine Falcon flew past us heading back towards the land, but
we couldn’t see whether it had caught one of the smaller birds. MF
photographs
© Richard Coomber