Beauty and the Beast....

....and some records.

I thought I'd start the post today with a beauty and the beast pic. Well, I don't know about you but I soon get fed up to the back teeth with too much scientific stuff connected with birds or anything else for that matter.... 

  

Blue Tit. Warren Baker  

Representing the beauty, if you can't say Ahhhh!....at the sight of this delightful young Blue Tit then I reckon you've lost all sense of feeling in your life.

Lammergeier. Mike Watson.

Representing the beast, this brute of a Lammergeier which Mike encountered on his recent Catalonia in Spring trip.

Bar-tailed Godwit. Pete Woodruff.

I was in the good company of JB today and we were both pleased to see the c.220 Bar-tailed Godwits in the Conder creeks again, this is a new experience for me with the species being here almost at the beginning of June, also Common Sandpiper and Greenshank noted. JB enjoyed the BTG's whilst I did a quick circuit to find 3 Whitethroat - a good year it seems -  2 Reed Bunting, House Martins nesting at River Winds and now apparently at Cafe d' Lune. From the old railway bridge I could see 9 Eider and 2 Wigeon on the Lune Estuary, and watched a Tree Sparrow - not a species in my book as seen very much here - feeding a single young, and a Buzzard overhead. On Conder Pool the pair of Lesser Black-backed Gulls are nesting here, and a solitary Black-tailed Godwit flew on to here. 

At Cockersands which was looking more than a little deserted today, at least 40 Eider seen, also noted c.60 Dunlin. A Whitethroat sang close by whilst - with a little persistence in a stake out - the singing male Quail was heard in the field behind the lighthouse car park. A brief look in at Aldcliffe produced a Little Ringed Plover on the flood.

Seakale. Pete Woodruff.

I was grateful to JB for pointing out the Seakale to me at Cockersands this afternoon. The species is listed as being in need of protection having been noted by botanists and other scientists as requiring the need to preserve. The Seakale is a member of the Mustard family, its habitat is on sand or between rocks on the beach, and on primary dunes as far north as Central Scotland, it likes salt and can survive flooding and burial in shingle.

Learning something every day....I luvit!