Todays Birds and....

Raven. Paul Baker.

Four excellent photographs the first of which is the best 'mug shot' of a Raven I ever saw, and all the way from British Columbia in Canada at that. Thanks for this Paul....I luv it!

Gannet. Gary Jones.

Thanks to Gary for this shot of the Gannet putting on the brakes as it touches down. This is excellent and is as good a photograph of a Gannet coming in to land that you could ever wish to achieve. Good on yer Gary its a superb piece of photography....and look at those tail feathers. 

With JB today in which case its not usually difficult to guess where we started. At Conder Green I first checked the Conder channel below the old railway bridge to find 4 Greenshank, for a while I had my 'recorders' hat on whilst viewing this area and counted 45 Redshank and 4 Dunlin. In the creeks I saw 5 Common Sandpiper, 2 Spotted Redshank, and 2 Ruff being a female and a juvenile, the latter on Conder Pool as it had been yesterday.

At Glasson Dock circa of 380 Dunlin and 100 Redshank, 3 Little Egret, and 2 Mediterranean Gulls were both adult and distant. We decided to take a trip down the road and into Fylde territory at Cockers Dyke not least because a juvenile Cuckoo was giving excellent views and was a rare opportunity to observe a bird which is never easy to connect with and is certainly becoming more difficult to in the days of its decrease. The only butterflies seen were a single Common Blue and Gatekeeper.

Cuckoo Behaviour. 

Some interesting behaviour/strategy was observed for thirty minutes in that this bird perched on telegraph wires, flew to ground in excess of thirty times and not once did it return to the same perch without a caterpillar in its bill. The conclusions here were, this bird could locate small prey from 40ft with a 100% success rate, the alternative of random plunging to ground wouldn't have had the same success. It was also noted that on returning to the perch with prey it then held the item in its bill for something like thirty seconds each time before swallowing it.

And the third pic....

 

Black Redstart. Zac Hinchcliffe.

....is of two Black Redstarts currently at Preston in Lancashire and I'm grateful to Zac for allowing these two beauties on to Birds2blog. Zac commented 'if two Black Redstarts are reported in your own town you simply cannot ignore them'....I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

Breeding Successes.

For the first time ever in the UK the Purple Heron has bred successfully at Dungeness RSPB Reserve in Kent.

And for only the second time in Britain the Little Bittern has also bred successfully at Ham Wall RSPB Reserve in Somerset.

Nearer to home a conversation with a Fylde birder this afternoon revealed that the Cetti's Warbler has also bred successfully at Marton Mere Reserve in Blackpool.