I completed the monthly Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) yesterday in rather breezy conditions – it’s not easy to ID birds obscured by vegetation when you can’t keep your scope still! However, I had a good morning, with signs of the very first migrants returning and some nice non-WeBS sightings too. Here are the results….
73 mallard
41 tufted duck
19 gadwall
7 teal – nice to see a few of these back on site
5 shoveler – the first ones back after the summer absence
2 pochard
42 mute swan
80 canada goose
18 greylag goose
172 coot
4 moorhen
8 great crested grebe
1 little grebe – the first on a WeBS count for some months
12 little egret
6 grey heron
1 cormorant
188 lapwing – quite a gathering on the largest island in Phase 1
4 green sandpiper
15 black-headed gull
2 common tern
1 kingfisher – the first on a WeBS count for a while
Also yesterday, there was a juvenile shelduck on silt lagoon 5 (second northern most), a juvenile cuckoo flew over the site – lovely to see this, a juvenile green woodpecker was near the woodland, a stoat was a welcome sighting on the Cromwell Trail near the Beach Hut and a rather windswept clouded yellow was on the southern part of the Cromwell Trail.
Greenshank and ringed plover on site in the last few days and nice to see a tufted duck with a new brood of 4 from the Beach Hut yesterday.