22nd November 2015

Weather: ENE force 0/1    some rain early
Lighter winds brought a good day for birds with records of both Great Northern Diver and Slavonian Grebe on the sea, also 10 Common Scoter, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers, 1 Red-throated Diver and 4 Great Crested Grebes. Passage birds included 15 Blackbirds and 3 Song Thrushes, while a Short-eared Owl and a Lapwing (at Little Eye) were good records for the islands. No less than 20,000 Herring Gulls were estimated on the east hoyle shore between Middle Eye and Meols, other large counts were 5,000 Knot, 3,000 Dunlin, 180 Curlew, with smaller numbers of Shelduck (90), Turnstone (85), Redshank (10), Ringed Plover (5), Grey Plover (4), Bar-tailed Godwit (1) and Purple Sandpiper (1). Grey Herons outnumbered Little Egrets 4 to 2, and a single Shag was logged. The few land birds of note not in the thrush family included a Rock Pipit and a Goldfinch. A thousand Cormorants were estimated on the east hoyle, but a single ringed bird was found dead by the main pond almost certainly as a result of a fox kill.
(DB)