But first some news about the Conder Pool Common Terns, including some behaviour by an adult Common Tern towards a chick, and some other behavioural traits I've never observed before.
In the video below, the adult tern perched at the far left hand of the raft, suddenly pounces on the chick and appears to stab at it with its bill before it escapes and runs off.
I made the following trimmed video at half speed where the aggression by the adult is more obvious.
This attack by the adult tern isn't the only odd behaviour surrounding these birds. I met Ian Hartley who gave me some news about young chicks gone missing and some dead which he had removed from the raft earlier. This prompts the suspected cause to be starvation, or in the case of those missing from the raft, a Barn Owl which daily hunts Conder Pool, and has done for some time now.
There has been a lot of mayhem in the colony recently, with chicks fighting each other and various adults over fish. In one incident, the 'wrong' chick grabbed a fish and the adult snatched it back and flew off before the chick could spit it out. There's been some chick mortality recently, perhaps because of all the competition over food coming in. Some good news to follow all this, is that 16 Common Tern chicks were still alive as at Friday, so we can hopefully expect they can all make it from here on.
For providing me with the news about the state of play and the update regarding the Common Terns, I'm very grateful to Ian Hartley.
Conder Pool.
I'm recording 34 Common Tern on Conder Pool Wednesday 29 July, seen as 24 adult and 16 chicks/young. Also here, in excess of 1,000 Redshank, 21 Greenshank, 14 Common Sandpiper, 7 Avocet, 2 Black-tailed Godwit, 2 Little Egret, and I made a count of 12 Little Grebe, this seems to be an early build up in winter numbers so early at the end of July.
Bank End.
I had messaged Andrew (Wagtail) Cornell earlier to ask if he was at Bank End, and arranged to meet up with him around 1.00pm. It was a pleasant meeting with Andrew, and resulted in my seeing 6 Yellow Wagtail off Bank End Farm.
And Finally....
Some lovely bees, butterflies, moths and hovers in the garden recently, and an uninvited and unwanted gate crasher....All images Pete Woodruff.
The Volucella zonaria is a Hornet Mimic Hoverfly, migratory from the Mediterranean, and is the largest hoverfly to be found in the UK.
