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Monday 3 October 2016

Winterton washout (except for a good seawatch!)

With a strong north-easterly all night, a visit to the coast seemed like a plan. In the event I walked from Horsey Gap to the Blocks and back with little to show for it apart from the ubiquitous Stonechats and Linnets. I did find well-conditioned Migrant Hawker and Ruddy Darter by the 'Kidney Pool' but nothing else...

A thirty minute seawatch (with a really nice Sea Palling patcher) produced some interesting wildfowl: Common and Velvet Scoter, hundreds of Brents, Wigeon and Teal, a couple of Mediterranean Gulls and a few Pintail. Two visiting birders I chatted to had seen a Short-eared Owl near the Pill Box, but I missed it...

A move to Walcott added a few more shore & sea birds, notably Turnstone, Eider and what, I assume, was a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull. One Herring Gull bore a pair of easy-to-read rings: perhaps someone seeing this might know where the bird acquired them! A small dark wader tazzed by: I thought it might have been a Purple Sandpiper.

The Pleiades in the pre-dawn sky, a lovely sunrise this morning and the thinnest waxing Moon tonight. Let's hope for something to set the pulse racing tomorrow!
















 
 


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