Bill came down to the Crook to day to help with the fencing for a picnic area near the car park and asked if i would post the following.
Paul
"The first sizable flock of Whooper Swans arrived today at the Crook 8 has been our best count up to now - 65+ or as close as makes no difference! Some whoopers were grazing in the sheep field on the right immediately before the RSPB signboard/entrance on Shell Road. Great to see and hear this very visible sign that winter migration is well under way, though the 1300+ Golden Plovers at the Crook have been telling us this for some weeks now. They put on a fantastic - no other word for it! - swarming display over the old airfield stubble fields late on Monday, visible from Wigtown Harbour. Tonight there were 3000+ starlings taking part in their ariel antics as the came into roost. The things you see without a camera!"
Paul.
I spent the afternoon, at Baldoon, the Whoopers where there with 6 Greylag Geese, a Ring-Tailed Hen Harrier was hunting the edges of the second field. to the left of the Farm buildings, then onto the merse, where a Merlin was on a broken branch on the merse, also a Peregrine on the ground.
Large numbers of Waders on the sands.
Nice to spend a afternoon watching waders, in the warm sun.
Gentalis.