Have not had Internet connections until recently but noted with interest the comments re: ring-necked duck which Stewart Devonald informed me about yesterday (during a chance meeting)after visiting the lake to see it. It was still there today on the Central Lake in a small group of tufted ducks - watched by RJH Jon Hudson and Richard Ellis. We all remarked that this one had a slightly more round-headed appearance compared with others RJE and I have seen in the past but it is a well marked female all the same. When I did a WeBs count around the lake on 23rd Feb, covering all lake arms methodically, she was not obviously present then. So presumably Lyndon's sighting on 24th more or less coincided with the day she arrived.
Eight goosanders there today and a rather scruffy looking sub-adult male shoveler on the Eastern Arm. Although it was a very spring-like day surprisingly no sand martins around yet. Green woodpeckers yaffling in usual places and goldcrests were in full song and in what I would consider to be usual/quite normal numbers. Stonechats are displaying on the Warren and along the range coast (near Stack Rocks) where choughs were nest-building at the weekend. Still around 1200-1500 golden plovers on the Army Range and a similar number of lapwings were feeding between Carew and Cosheston much of last week until the weekend.
