Thursday 27 August 2020

Don't Stint Yourself

On Wednesday we were supposed to be at Paull, but very strong winds were forecast, so we switched to North Cave Wetlands.  We walked along Dryham Lane first and headed for the hide.  It was rather quiet from there. We carried along to Carp Lake, and looked at the view from the steps of the now closed Crosslands Hide.  Later along the hedgerow beside Far Lake we came across a flock of Long-tailed Tits and Warblers.  One of them was definitely a Chiffchaff.  

The island and shallow water around Reedbed Lake held a good number of Lapwing, plus a few Teal.  The sun came out and there were several very late Meadow Browns, Small Tortoiseshells and dragonflies.  The best birds were seen from Turret Hide, which included several Green Sandpipers, a Greenshank and a Ruff.  
Little Stint
 Black Swan
 ditto
 Chiffchaff
 ditto
 ditto
 Long-tailed Tit
 ditto
ditto
 ditto
 Egyptian Geese
 ditto
 Ruff
Ruff (c) 2020 Mike Hind
 Green Sandpiper (c) 2020 Mike Hind
Green Sandpiper
 ditto
 ditto
 Greenshank [left] and Green Sandpiper
 Meadow Brown
 Gold Spot
 ditto
 Stock Dove
Common Darter 
Common Darter (c) 2020 Mike Hind
 Common Blue Damselfly (c) 2020 Mike Hind
 Water Snails
On Thursday we went to Tophill Low.  We had better views of the birds than at North Cave.  The best birds were at South Marsh East, which included 3 Green Sandpipers, a Kingfisher and an immature Heron. There were many Lapwings, Teal, a couple of young Shelduck, and some indeterminate wildfowl in difficult light.
Green Sandpiper
 ditto
 ditto
Another Kingfisher was seen at Watton Borrow Pits, but the place was awash with Canada and Greylag Geese.   
Little Egret
 ditto
 ditto
Heron 
 Record shot of Kingfisher
In the afternoon we had to speed up as very threatening grey clouds were lowering in the distance.  We made it to SME just as the rain started.  We hadn’t been there long when a Little Stint flew on to a small island alongside a Green Sandpiper and a small wisp of Snipe.  It hadn’t been there long when it really poured down.  The Stint was still there half an hour later, although it flew off when a flock of Lapwing took to the air, only to return a couple of minutes later, when it realised they weren’t fleeing a predator.    
 Little Stint - Note the 'braces' on the back
 Little Stint
 ditto
 Size comparisons with Lapwing [right] and Snipe [left]
 Silver-Y Moth

1 comment:

Jan Smith said...

Fabulous photographs, thanks for sharing.