Our terns are back!!! On Monday I had reports of 7 Little Terns at Hodbarrow a bit later in the week there were a few more and yesterday I had a high count of 20 on the island. Last year we had 13 as a peak count so it's looking good! Could this be due to the loud speaker sending out Little Tern calls and attracting birds in - I hope so!! Common Terns and Sandwich are all at similar levels to last year - fingers crossed. There was also a sighting of Black tern at yesterday (I was in the hide in the morning and didn't see them - should have stayed for a bit longer!)
Cracking little tern from Paul Swales. You can clearly see the white triangle on the forehead and the yellow bill with black tip. As the name suggests this tern is alot smaller than the others such as common or arctic and make a distinct sound http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/l/littletern/index.aspx http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/families/terns.aspx
Other birds on the reserve include waders such as dunlin, whimbrel, ringed pover, sighting of little ringed plover, turnstone, redshank, oystercatcher and very noisy lapwing giving some of the gulls a bit of a shouting at. In the Scrub we have Lesser white throat, sedge warbler as well as the usual little birds going around. In the old qaurry sand martins and swallows still giving a great show swooping to catch insects over the water. Eider count is extremely high aswell with 130+ throughout the reserve.
Please let me know anything you see or high counts for birds
Cheers
Mhairi