Birding in two halves....

....the first of which was - as ever on Friday - with JB/BT. Inevitably we went to Freeman's Pool's to see how many owl's we could 'collect'. But as it turned out the big mistake we made was to go unarmed with the necessary info from the guy's who know best as to where we should be training our eye's to find these bird's, as a result we left empty handed. However, the bird's which entered my book here were a male Stonechat, a Green Sandpiper, 4 Little Grebe, a Goldcrest, and 15 Snipe flying around the pool - and fooling me for a few seconds into thinking Golden Plover until I got to grips with the bill - and eventually going down on to the island. A Spotted Redshank, and a Little Egret were on the marsh.

To add to yesterday's record's at Conder Green was a female Merlin perched on a post out on the marsh, and 2 Greenshank, and a Spotted Redshank qualify for being noted again. On the canal basin at Glasson Dock the drake Scaup was seen again, and to note on the Lune Estuary were 320 Black - tailed Godwit, and 30 Goldeneye were eventually counted with 12 here and another 18 from Bodie Hill, so a little improvement on recent counts here.

John and Brian had other commitments today and we split at one o'clock. Try though I may to go elsewhere I wasn't able to resist the magnetism of Cockersands. On my way there I found the 'swan's' on Moss Lane had moved nearer to the road making the count easier than yesterday and was able to confirm the Whooper Swan number to be 42 and the Bewick's Swan to be 3 including the juvenile seen on recent visits here.

At Cockersands I saw c.20 Twite briefly in flight, c.650 Curlew were to note off the Caravan Park, c.650 Golden Plover in a Abbey Farm field were at least 200 up on yesterday's count of 450. A walk in the direction of Crook Farm produced c.400 Black - tailed Godwit, but to prove a point I dashed off to Bodie Hill and Glasson Dock to find not a solitary BTG confirming that these were the birds seen 2.5 hours earlier at Glasson Dock having moved to Cockersands and been joined by another c.80. I somehow suspected I hadn't found c.720 BTG in the area.

The pic's show the Landart recently created at Cockersands only to succumb not many weeks later to the mighty forces of the sea and to end up in a heap. In time the sea will spread the stone's around the shore to leave people never knowing that Richard Shilling's excellent art ever existed here.