Unseasonal scaup

The weather has continued to dominate our days and the movements of birds.  Following Friday's downpour, a male scaup was a great find early on Saturday morning, and is still present today (Sunday).  It's a bird that should be much farther north, breeding in the Arctic, but presumably had already failed and is already moving south.  It appears to have some staining on its breast - oil? - but doesn't appear to be faring badly.  Scaup are not common in North Wales, and not at all common in July!  Our thanks to Alex Jones for the photo.

Also heading south are a summer-plumage knot, with dunlins outside Benarth Hide this afternoon, and 52 black-tailed godwits yesterday (7th), which is one of the biggest flocks here for a while.  These are Icelanic birds, and many remain in their smart brick-orange plumage.  Greenshank and whimbrel were here on Tuesday (3rd) and Friday (6th) and half a dozen teal are another sign of autumn.

So, autumn appears to be underway, yet there are still birds hatching here.  Our last oystercatcher nest of the year has hatched a couple of chicks on the island in front of the boardwalk screen - they're still tiny, but watch for the parents feeding them.  Most wader chicks find their own food, but oystercatchers are more like songbirds for their first couple of weeks, needing their parents to probe the ground for their food.  Common sandpiper chicks have been seen again, and the great crested grebe young are now three weeks old and each parent has taken responsibility for a different chick.  Out on the estuary, look out for a creche of 20 young shelducks.

It's been a pretty rough week for insects, but we've seen emperor dragonfly, broad-bodied chaser and blue-tailed damselfly around the ponds this week, and this morning's guided walk found a small tortoiseshell butterfly.