BIRDING THE LUNE ESTUARY THE FOREST OF BOWLAND AND BEYOND.................................................................................BRENT GEESE HEYSHAM PETE WOODRUFF

Friday, 18 March 2016

The Black Hole.

With the majority of winter birds having left for their breeding grounds, and the summer birds not yet arrived, birding has plunged into a black hole, though a couple of my notes for yesterday contradict this, Conder Green, Conder Pool, and the Lune Estuary were pretty desolate.

The island of boxes on Conder Pool is being domineered by the Lesser Black-backed Gull pair, whilst 32 Wigeon and 9 Tufted Duck virtually had the pool to themselves, with no sign of any Little Grebe. A Spotted Redshank and a pair of Goosander likewise to themselves in the creeks save a 'few' Teal and no sign of the Common Sandpiper. The circuit produced a Reed Bunting, Great Tit and Blue Tit, with 4 Small Tortoiseshell seen. The Lune Estuary was at low tide, and my notes consisted of up to 100 Black-tailed Godwit from the bowling green, with no sign of any Goldeneye.


Buzzard. Cockersands. Stuart Piner. 

At Cockersands, the local Buzzard was yet again on it's branch in it's tree as it habitually has been for several weeks now, though it does fly as SP's image of this very bird clearly shows. The estimate yesterday was of 200 Whooper Swan towards Bank End as seen from Moss Lane, 3 Linnet and 6 Tree Sparrow were around Bank Houses. The whole place eventually lit up for me when I found 272 Black-tailed Godwit with 18 Knot off Crook Farm.

It's godda get better than this!!

Quote from Bryan Yorke post yesterday 17 March....'The bird migration was non-existent with no Larks crossing, Mipits or for that matter nothing else'....you can say that again Bryan.


Cockersands Corpse.   



Another corpse on the shingle at Cockersands yesterday, this one headless but I'm going for Guillemot.

1 comment:

  1. Looks like spring Migration will be a repeat of the previous 3 years Pete, slow to start then everything at once!

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