Two great egrets and a green sandpiper late afternoon

No sign of Rock pipit this morning, but plenty of shoreline for it to lurk inconspicuously. Common sand new in this morning, and I located a f scaup in with the coot this pm. GWe still performing well for most of the day.

A brief look along the southern and western banks this am; Rock pipit, Wheatear, several groups of finches all SE (including about 15 siskin) a few Redwing SW also. Didn’t have time to check the wildfowl and shoreline, but 3 Pintail have been present for last 5 days.

3 little egret and at one time 5 GW egret, down to 2 when i left in fading light and a Heron

Barn owl near the Clay pits around 6:45 this morning

2 gw egret, 1 pintail, the male mandarin (I wonder what happened to the female that was here in the spring?) amongst the other ducks at 4.30pm.

Mike

just a heads up regards parking at the Sharpham road entrance car park… this is closed from Monday1st October until the 14th [no access to the cemetery on the 9th!!!]  for resurfacing, you can park at the Sports area car park and walk down or use the Axbridge /Boat club entrance

Water level continues to fall and variety of dabbling ducks rises: 8 shovelers, 10 gadwalls and 28 wigeons at dawn today.  Also 10 tufted ducks and 1 great white egret.  No terns or waders.

Picked up a Spotshank on call this am about 7:30 which departed NE, after doing full loop of res it’s dropped in with 11 Blk wit and 2 Knot (both Grey phal are also still present, but Blk tern and L gull departed). If you’re visiting please keep to the embankment so everyone can enjoy. Cheers

Hi Kim, thought I could see you on the south shore.

The 2 birds present are separate from the 1st individual - although one is a juv/1w bird, the bird present currently is in a more advanced moult state than the original bird (mantle, throat, secondaries all moulted), not sure about the sex though.

Cheers

Both grey phalaropes, little gull, black tern and great white egret all still present this morning until around 08:30.  With the phalaropes feeding close together, I was able to see a difference in size between them and suppose that the smaller bird (being the first one to arrive, I think) is a male and the other, greyer bird is a female.

Also, meadow pipits are on the move with 8 along the western bank; until this morning I’ve only seen ones or twos here this autumn.

Both phalarope & black tern still here (tern travelling between spit & cheddar tower today), great white egret was until balloon took off about 5 pm.

Photos of the little gull on avonbirding & Facebook, but I didn’t stay around long enough to see it.

Mike

All 4 still present as per yesterday except phalaropes twice made visits to Cheddar tower giving very close views.

Some pictures on my flickr page.

This morning. 2 Grey phalarope on spit next to sailing club. Black tern and Little gull hunting insects in front of Cheddar Tower.

along with the Tern dancing on the water picking off flies?  noticed a very pale wader of some sort[phal?  [airborne] heading toward Weare, and of note the male Mandarin was among the other ducks close to the Axbridge gate