Not too many birds at the harbour-end apart from 34 feeding dunlin and other expected waders there, including 12 ringed plovers. It was much busier over on the Kilpaison-side, where a feeding flock of 44 pale-bellied brents included a colour-ringed adult. It was a bit too far away to read properly, even with a scope. Hopefully others have had closer/better views of this one.
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| A ringed brent in the centre looks like U on white (right leg); red (possibly 3) on left leg |
Numbers of wigeon feeding alongside the brents were quite high -several hundred at least. Plenty of gulls there too - including 200-300 black-headed,at least 12 common gulls but only 2 Med gulls were noticed. So no obvious Med gull roost was forming over there at the time (as far as we could tell).
Among other shore birds there were at least 15 bar-tailed godwits and several grey plovers who, with their loud alarm calls, alerted more or less every bird on the beach to a passing sparrowhawk.
Last weekend's single adult whooper swan was still present in the same place but it had been joined by 10 mute swans. All the waterfowl were grazing the inter-tidal zone, perhaps feeding on the Zostera beds out there?
We ended our day at Stackpole where a black redstart was active on the Manor House roof-top at sunset prior to roosting. Perhaps this one will be overwintering on the Stackpole Centre buildings?
A couple of noctule bats were hunting over Bosherston Lake just after the sun had set, just as large numbers of jackdaws were coming into their traditional lake-side tree roost.