Seventeen Days Later!

When I finally got out on Friday, it had been 17 days since my last wander around the ranch....That's depressing. What started as a snail trail, slowly built into a bit of a crescendo which culminated in another one of my successful return visits to a site covered earlier in the day.

If I was going to get the ball rolling five days late into the New Year, I had to note the routine stuff on Conder Pool to get something in the book. There was a up to 90 Mallard, 42 Teal, 9 Tufted Duck, 8 Little Grebe, a lone drake Wigeon, a Snipe and a Little Egret....Stock taking complete.

It was a day of large numbers of waders on the Lune Estuary, and in what was essentially a brief visit for me, I noted at least 1,500 Black-tailed Godwit, up to 100 Dunlin, and 120 Golden Plover. A male and female Wigeon hauled out together were marked with a green ring right leg, and metal left. Frustratingly too distant to read, they were my first ever ringed Wigeon.

I drove past Clarkson's Farm fields to see 4 Cattle Egret, almost certainly the same four I found along Slack Lane over two months ago on 25 October. As I set out on the circuit, a pair of Stonechat were on the marsh opposite the Caravan Park, they were the only two I saw on the day. In the hedge at Bank House, 15 House Sparrow, to be honest I don't recall the last time I saw this number of House Sparrow at Cockersand. Noted along Moss Lane, 9 Blackbird were within 20 metres of each other, 4 Goldfinch, a Reed Bunting and a Song Thrush.

In a field off Slack Lane, 138 Whooper Swan, were the only ones seen at or from Cockersand today.

On Plover Scar, I finally caught up with the Snow Bunting, amazingly camouflaged on the tidewrack. Arriving back at the Caravan Park, I briefly saw the Barn Owl in fields behind Bank House.

When I made what turned out to be a successful return to the Lune Estuary at Glasson, the tide was in flow and was pushing a good number of waders on to the shore. I eventually picked out a mid-distance bird with unmarked white underparts and clear cut white fore-supercilium. It was the Spotted Redshank ending my day nicely thank you very much!