My afternoon walk to East Hide today turned into a wonderful wagtail ID workshop. There were wagtails of several different colours and shades on show, all feeding on the islands nearest to the hide, or resting on the nearest crossposts.
Most of the wagtails were our familiar pied variety, but even they included various plumages - adult males in their crisp black and white plumage, adult females with greyer backs, and paler, greyer juveniles. There must have been at least 30 of them flitting around, calling excitedly. Looking carefully through the flock, two or three stood as being different again. These were white wagtails - the mainland European race, so technically the same species but a much scarcer form in the UK. White wagtails are subtly different to pieds, but can be quite distinctive. They have pale grey backs yet still retain the black face markings of the pieds. They are generally passage migrants in the UK, but this is the form you see if travelling through Europe.
Female pied wagtail
Also among the flock were at least three yellow wagtails - not as bright as during the breeding season as at least two of them were juveniles, they still stood out with their yellow underparts. There were reports earlier today of a grey wagtail among them too, though that eluded me.
Yellow wagtail by Jon Evans
The wagtails weren''t the only small birds flitting around the Scrape as they were accompanied by at least 30 linnets. These small finches were feeding on seeds of the sea aster and other plants on the Scrape's islands. A wheatear briefly landed on East Hide too.
The small songbirds may have caught much of the attention, but the waders fought back gamely thanks in part to a very vocal greenshank and at least four mobile common sandpipers. Further back on the Scrape, at least 12 avocets remain, 60+ black-tailed godwits fed, and several redshanks, spotted redshanks and dunlins could be seen, as well a ruff. Other species seen earlier included two sanderlings, ringed and little ringed plovers and snipe.
Duck numbers have increased dramatically since I last looked at the Scrape, with good numbers of teals, lots of mallards and gadwalls (the males of the latter already returning to their finest plumage) and several shovelers and shelducks present. Along the reed edges, water rails could be heard squealing, and at least popped into view. Sparrowhawk and hobby were feeding over the Scrape earlier too.
In the reedbed, bearded tits were vocal along the North Wall, and sightings at Island Mere this morning included bitterns, marsh harriers, hobbies and buzzards. An osprey was reported again yesterday - possibly the one that has been feeding on the Blyth Estuary for several days.
North Bushes is still attracting various warblers - I saw whitethroat, lesser whitethroat and chiffchaff, while blackcap, garden warbler and willow warbler have all been seen. Other birds in this area include both green and great spotted woodpecker, treecreeper, several robins and mixed flocks of tits and finches. When the Waveney Bird Club have completed their final ringing demonstration on Thursday, we hope to have the seasonal North Bushes Trail open again by next weekend.
The path from South Belt Crossroads to Wildlife Lookout is always a good place to see willow emerald damselflies, and so it proved today with at least four ovipositing (egg-laying) pairs. A rarely seen adult antlion was found nearby too. Meanwhile, numbers of beewolves and pantaloon bees are declining as their flight season nears an end, and wasp spiders can still be found with careful searching among the dunes.
An adult antlion