Carew/Creswell (WeBs) this morning and Landshipping area (briefly) lunch-time

The early morning mist just started to lift in time to enable some reasonable telescope views to be made at various points around the Carew and Cresswell Rivers at high tide. Duck numbers were still low with no more than 70+ teal in usual spots but wigeon numbers were a bit better, with a similar number near West Williamston.

Being quite well camouflaged and hidden away in the taller saltmarsh vegetation, most of the roosting curlew (75+) and redshank (60+) were initially missed up near New Shipping. At least 5 bar-tailed godwits were roosting with them. No greenshanks were obvious today. Down at Lawrenny Ferry 27 oystercatchers were roosting on the sea-wall - a favoured spot at this time of year.

Not far away from the oystercatchers, 7 common sandpipers were also roosting and occasionally feeding along the sea-wall. Perhaps some will over-winter in this area?

They were never all close enough together to obtain a photo of  all seven

Along the road between Lawrenny Ferry and Lawrenny village a firecrest was a nice find - feeding in roadside trees with a small mixed flock of tits, including long-tailed, coal and mash tits.

It was noticeable that small numbers of skylarks were on the move this morning. Several were noted in fields near the estuary but others (probably no more than 30-40) were seen or heard flying over  - most seemed to be heading south-east to east.

It seemed to be quite a nice autumn day for skylark dispersal 

Later, up at Landshipping,  a nice flock of c. 300 golden plovers flew down from the Eastern or Western Cleddau direction, probably landing in fields bordering Sprinkle Pill.

From the Landshipping-side we also reckoned that there must have been at least 150-170 oystercatchers feeding on the shore. We were a bit too far away and there could have been more - even so this seemed quite a good number for the area.

The greylag flock has increased recently in the upper reaches of the Daugleddau. Just before dusk on Friday evening a skein of 52 (coming from the East) in almost perfect V formation flew over our garden, heading towards the Cleddau. Last evening near dusk we reckoned there were at least 120-150 greylags heading off to fields on the Sprinkle-side (plus at least a couple of hundred Canada geese heading to the shore at more or less the same time). The greylags flew across to Brickyard (near Landshipping Quay) from Sprinkle Pill late this morning.

Part of the greylag flock heading off to fields near Sprinkle last  evening, photographed from Landshipping