The autumn equinox signals the official end of summer today, although the weather bore more resemblance to a summer day than early autumn with bright sunshine, blue skies, barely a breath of wind, and robins singing constantly. All in all the perfect day for a stroll along the beach.
The beach looked wonderfully clean thanks to the efforts of the 24 volunteers who joined Amy to collect and record litter there on Saturday as part of the Marine Conservation Society's annual Great British Beach Clean event.
Several brent geese had been reported flying south this morning, but with no wind in early afternoon the sea was predictably quiet. However, there's something magical about watching the waves lapping against wet shingle, even on a calm day, and I could easily have sat and watched the sea for some time, but I could hear the whistling call of wigeons on the Scrape so headed on to East Hide. Not, however, until I had paused to photograph the gorgeous blue sky and cotton wool clouds behind some autumn seed-heads.
East Hide was busy when I arrived, and it was easy to see why. Teals were everywhere, feeding on fallen seeds in the shallows along the edge of every island and bank. Wigeons grazed on the more vegetated islands, and careful scanning revealed several shovelers and gadwalls amongst the throng, as well as five elegant pintails and a couple of young shelducks, though there was no sign of the garganey that had been seen earlier. A juvenile little ringed plover fed to the right of the hide, with a couple of snipe nearby, pied wagtails flitted across most islands, a few dunlins trotted along the edge of one island, and several spotted redshanks and black-tailed godwits probed in the shallow water.
As I searched for a little stint that our volunteer guides had seen, suddenly there was mayhem as a female marsh harrier quartered low over the Scrape and ducks and waders fled in all directions, swirling around for several minutes before settling back down to feed or sleep. Now I could clearly see that the morning estimate of 600+ teals and 200+ wigeons was pretty accurate as ducks spread out across the water. At least 20 dunlins and 30 black-tailed godwits twisted in tight flocks to deter the potential predator, and as they settled back down I spotted single knot, grey plover, curlew and little stint.
Elsewhere on the Scrape there were sightings of ringed and golden plovers, greenshanks and little egrets, while the great white egret made a couple of brief appearances over the Island Mere end of the reedbed. Other sightings at Island Mere included hobby, kestrel, marsh harrier, several buzzards, snipe, swallows and bearded tits, with hobbies also seen over the Scrape and North Wall.
Hobby by John Chapman
Migrants included a whinchat from North Wall, lesser whitethroat and blackcap in North Bushes, whitethroats and chiffchaffs. The North Bushes continue to be a good place to see butterflies and dragonflies too, and I was treated superb views of a treecreeper.
Finally, the archaeologists from Dig Ventures have been busy excavating trenches on the Chapel Field this week as they investigate the theory of a pirate priests and ground-truth previous archaeological studies. You can pop along and see what they've found every day until Sunday