What a weekend!

Seawatching on Saturday morning was fantastic, with big numbers of Great and Arctic Skuas moving South. The highlights though were two juvenile Sabine's Gulls, two juvenile Long-tailed Skuas and two adult Pomarine Skuas.



Great Skuas - our biggest flock was 8!


Velvet Scoters

Then in the afternoon we heard that the coast was covered in migrants. It turned out not to be an exaggeration!

On my local patch I found a Bluethroat and a Greenish Warbler !!!!!!! in amongst Redstarts, Spotted Flycatchers, Pied Flycatchers, Willow Warblers, Garden Warblers, Blackcaps, Lesser whiethroats, Tree Pipit etc. etc.

Today there were much the same birds on the patch but the sun allowed some photographs.


Redstart


Lesser Whitethroat


Pied Flycatcher


Garden Warbler



Spotted Flycatchers (a patch tick yesterday!)


Willow Warbler

30th August 2008 Whitburn Obs

A fantastic seawatch from Whitburn OBS this morning.

Although I did learn that I can't count duck flocks! If you are just as bad as me at estimating flock numbers then try this link here. It's a good game even if it didn't make me any better!

Before 10.00am there was a duckfest and more:
>1000 Teal
>250 Common Scoter
50+ Wigeon
1 Shoveller
1 Gadwall
13 Shelduck
12 Eider
2 Mallard
90+ Manx Shearwaters
1 Sooty Shearwater
1 Pomarine Skua (adult with full spoons)
4 Bonxies
17 Arctic Skuas
10 Little Gulls
2 Whimbrel
and a flock of 12 Common Sandpipers!


How many Teal in this picture? Don't ask me!


2 adult Arctic Skuas make a getaway after nicking a pipefish from this gull!


a juvenile Arctic Skua - one of only a very few past Whitburn so far this year.


10 of the 12 Common Sandpipers - I've never seen a migrating flock of this species before!

Brilliant!

Dalton Park Dragons and Damsels

Finally today we had some sunshine, so I popped down to Dalton Park to look for dragonflies. Having never seen any at this site before I was surprised to find 5 different species:



Common Blue Damselfly


Blue-tailed Damselfly


Emerald Damselfly


Common Darter


Emperor !!!

I wonder if this site gets migrant species too?

Seawatching Fun

Good Seawatching so far this weekend. Took Friday off and was rewarded by

ADULT SABINES GULL

early on - picked up simultaneously by the two observatory residents!

Friday evening was a big disappointment with only a few Arctic Skuas migrating south in the Northerly wind and Manx Shearwaters coming past at 1 per hour!

Today was a little better - no increase in skuas or shearwaters but a small increase in Teal (91 N) and Common Scoters (68 N).

That is, until about 9.00am when for no apparent reason a Sooty Shearwater came North pretty much right in front of the obs!





Sooty Shearwater

Black Stork in County Durham

And today, a British tick in my home county!



thanks to who ever found it!

A week in British Columbia

A few good birds during a relaxing week in BC

Pine Siskin


Ruffed Grouse

... a tick!

Bald Eagle


and a mystery hummer