Imagine the warden’s surprise. You are doing your rounds of Old Moor first thing in the morning and find – of all things – a little tern! More on that in a minute, first, here are the sightings from today…
Little terns are – and I’m quoting the RSPB website here – “a strictly coastal species”. Yes, well spotted - Old Moor is nowhere near the coast!
As their name suggests, they are tiny, weighing about the same as a tennis ball! The adults have a black cap with a distinctive white forehead. Their bill is yellow with a black tip and like all terns they are acrobatic flyers.
Usually little terns arrive in the UK and Ireland in April or May and return to suitable breeding beaches. These colonies are dotted around the coast with a bias towards the eastern shores. For folk in the Dearne Valley to see a little tern, we’d usually have to travel. Hence the surprise.
Today’s little tern was seen at Old Moor from first thing. At first it fished on the Field Pool and the Wader Scrape and then ended up on Wath Ings this afternoon. Tolerated by the four common tern that are resident at Old Moor at the moment, it seemed content to make the most of its ‘stopover’ before carrying on with its journey mid-afternoon.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to get a photo of the bird in question from today, but here’s a little tern as seen at one of our nearest coastal colonies.
Wonder what tomorrow will bring…
Thanks for the comment Bridgey. Garden wabler = skulking, hard to see, calls from the depth of bushes... NOT at Old Moor it doesn't! This one's a little beauty and showing very well from the tops of those shrubs on the 'triangle'. Glad you got to see it and hope that more do before it remembers how it's supposed to behave!
I also missed out on the tern but was pleased to get views of noisy but elusive reed warblers on Green Lane and at the Reedbed Hide and an excellent view of the garden warbler (a first for me) in the “triangle”.