Magnetised....again!

I was magnetised towards Conder Green/Glasson Dock and Cockersands yet again yesterday. I often intend to spread my wings and move on to pastures new but invariably get so tied up with these areas that I've usually run out of time before I can.

The tide was at its height at 10.45am so I paid a brief visit to Conder Green to look over the pool before moving on. I was only be able to count 5 Little Grebe on the pool today, a Greenshank, Spotted Redshank, and 2 Snipe, a Wren was close by in the bush next to the viewing platform, two female Shoveler were very unusual on the pool. On the canal basin at Glasson Dock the female Scaup still here, and on Jeremy Lane the 'August' Whooper Swan was with 41 Mute Swans. 

Redwing Antonio Puigg  

Fieldfare David Cookson

On Moss Lane I found my first winter thrushes - uncounted from a moving motor - Fieldfare and Redwing, also a Great-spotted Woodpecker. 

Walkies on Plover Scar. Pete Woodruff.

At Cockersands, this idiot with nine dogs - most off the lead - came on the scene. OK the heavily cropped pic doesn't really show the problem but if you 'clik the pik' you can see at least six of them, take it from me this is bird disturbance at its worst.... that's the 'there for all eternity' monster Heysham Nuclear Power Station in the right hand corner of the pic by the way. 

But back to birds and birding....20 Herring Gull included R3RG which I found here earlier in the year on 22 May, I'll make enquiries to see if its history has progressed since I last reported it. The only waders of note today - before the above happened - were 12 Turnstone with a Little Egret on Plover Scar. On the estuary, 4 Eider, 10 Pintail, and 7 Red-breasted Merganser. Twelve Black-tailed Godwit were overhead at Crook Cottage, up to 60 Skylark were flighting over fields at Abbey Farm, c.15 Greenfinch noted and a Kestrel.  

Looking to Bowland. Pete Woodruff.

The weather was as unpredictable as ever - 'clik the pik' and it looks even worse - when I called in at Glasson Dock on the way back to Lancaster to find an adult Mediterranean Gull, and noted c.2,500 Golden Plover, a Greenshank, a Grey Plover, and 2 Little Egret.

The Otter and the Dog Problems.

The Otters are putting the M6 link road proposals on hold....read 'a bit' about them Here 

I don't really want to labour this issue, but to compound the dog problem at Cockersands, two hours after the 'mutts' had gone two birders armed to the teeth with optics were engaged in the very same exercise of covering the length and breadth of Plover Scar by which time anything that had been present had disappeared....I give up!