Three Ducks, Four Gulls....

....and one or two other birds.

Paying a visit to the Aldcliffe area on Friday, if I'd have been on a paid on results here I'd have had to have beans on toast for tea. 

Ruddy Shelduck. Eric Baccega @ Arkive 

But I did see the 3 Ruddy Shelduck on the Wildfowlers Pool, been in the area over a week now having been found last Friday. They are pretty smart birds, though nothing to get too excited about, the majority of Ruddy Shelduck in the UK are unlikely to be genuine wild vagrants, and one of these bears a pink ring probably indicating which collectors ornamental pond it comes from.

I ticked off 24 species in the time it took me to do a circuit, but few of any note. At least one Little Grebe, Little Egret, and Gadwall were of note on Freeman's Pools, and small groups of Goldfinch here and there were of note. The walk along the embankment had me seeing probably up to 90 Meadow Brown butterflies.

Some business in the afternoon at Morecambe had me off to Heysham later to search Red Nab and find 4 Mediterranean Gull all adults, with c.250 Curlew also roosting here at high tide. 

Ringed Plover. Pete Woodruff.

With the Black-headed Gulls checked out on the outfalls I continued to the south wall to find the same Ringed Plover above which I had seen on my last visit here on 16 July, about which I made the following comment in my post....

'A walk along the sea wall to the south side of the harbour had me finding this Ringed Plover. I have no idea what the bird was doing a little out of context here, but it stayed quite close to me and was calling excitedly all the time as it would do to young of which I found none and to be honest didn't expect to, so I was unable to work out why this bird was here and behaving in this manner'.

Well I should have known better as this bird was again calling excitedly, and this time a closer look on the rough ground in a small enclosure here had me finding a downy chick with a pair of adult Ringed Plover. If this chick had any siblings I didn't find any, but the Ringed Plover usually lays four eggs, so no big success with this pair, and the chick will need luck on it's side to escape the attention of the many gulls at the harbour until it fledges in about three weeks time.