Angle Bay to West Angle this afternoon

With such warm and sunny spring-like weather, we decided to get away from the computers and take a walk around the Angle peninsula this afternoon. We bumped into Paul Warren and John Hayes at the Kilpaison end of the bay who informed us they'd seen 21 pintail (flown off before we got there).
Pintail are quite regular in small numbers at Angle Bay in winter but 21 is more or less double the previous highest counts (recorded by WeBs) since the 1960s.

There were 14 light-bellied brent geese on the Kilpaison side, at least 30 bar-tailed godwits there, plus small flocks of dunlin, a few sanderling and knot. Common gulls were reasonably plentiful, including quite a few 1st winter and older sub-adult birds.

Part of the knot flock and a black-tailed godwit

Over at the Angle village side, we noted a flock of c.40 black-tailed godwits roosting on the spit. There were at least 30 more knot feeding on the shore as the tide fell - including a colour-ringed and orange flag-marked individual K7.

Was this bird one of those ringed by Paddy, Mike and Paul we wondered?

K7

Along the path to West Angle it was nice to see a fairly close-in to shore black-throated diver. It was resting just outside Angle Bay near the lifeboat station, providing some quite good views for a short while.

The coast path walk to West Angle was very quiet for small birds (occasional predated lapwing, golden plover and redwings along the way being grim reminders of the recent cold spell). Lots of large Larus gulls were resting on the rocks in the sun at West Angle. Among them was an immature Iceland gull - perhaps the one from the Gann?

It seemed warm and settled enough for sand martins to possibly be passing through but we saw none. We saw a good variety of birds anyway, had a nice bit of exercise and lovely walk.