Patch Of The Day!

Wednesday 3 June.

Common Tern. Conder Pool. Sept 2014. Dan Haywood.

I'm looking forward to this kind of result on Conder Pool hopefully by early August. I last saw both these birds - one of them a runt - with an adult on the Lune Estuary at Glasson Dock on 12 September 2014, from were they hopefully departed on migration southward towards their wintering quarters along the West African coast, mostly Mauritania to Nigeria.

Birders have told me this years Common Terns on Conder Pool appear to have gone, but the truth is they've been present on three visits I've made since their arrival on 22 May and were still there on Wednesday. I reckon she's already laid eggs and is sitting tight, though male and female Common Tern both incubate. If you train a telescope on the box they're using you'll occasionally see the black of the crown as the bird lifts it's head a little....great stuff.

Also of note on a quiet Conder Pool, a drake Wigeon not seen since the back end of winter, 3 Tufted Duck, and a Little Egret. Good numbers of manly Swift, with Sand Martin and a House Martin were all hawking over the pool as they have been on every visit I made here since 19 May when there was at least 50 Swift. I watched a male Redshank in the creeks displaying and eventually mating, 4 Goosander were upstream on the river from the road bridge. House Martin are visiting nests at two properties, where one bird is going to a nest above where a gleaming compact disc had been hung as a deterrent, but which now appears to have fallen off, I'm hoping there's to be no more disturbance or worse to these birds here. On Jeremy Lane I saw a Whitethroat and a Stoat dodging back into the overgrown ditch when it saw me approaching. 

At Cockersands, Plover Scar at high tide held little more than 60 waders being, c.40 Ringed Plover, 15 Dunlin, and 4 Oystercatcher, 36 Dunlin and 12 Ringed Plover came on to the shingle below the lighthouse car park. On a wander I saw 9 Skylark, 6 Linnet were flighty in the abbey area, 4 Whitethroat, 2 Wheatear, 2 Reed Bunting, a Sedge Warbler, and a Stock Dove, c.40 Lapwing as a flock came down into a field....looks like it's autumn!