Friday 10 July 2015

visits to west rise in june:

4th: first adult med gull on return passage
5th: 2 black-tailed godwits
18th: cuckoo, hobby and teal
20th: 2 pochards
24th: 2 red-veined darters and a curlew (patch tick i think)
26th: first sand martin (this is what i associate the start of autumn with, last year was on 13th!)

in july:

1st: a proper summer day - baking hot, tons of meadow browns, first flying ant event, a few black-headed and med gulls coming through, 5 egrets (numbers of herons+egrets building up now post-breeding), a curlew over, first juv big gull which was a lesser black-back and not the expected yellow-leg
2nd: a gorgeous black spotted redshank. think i've only seen this plumage on spotshank once before at elmley, many years ago? also the first clouded yellow
3rd: 2 little ringed plovers, first juv herring and black-headed gulls and a family party of greylags (from shinewater)
4th: redshank, teal, juvenile yellow-legged gull
5th: black-tailed godwit, 2 lrp's and 3 redshanks
6th: spoonbill (long awaited patch tick), blackwit, 4 common sands, 1 green sand
7th: spoonbill still - together with 12 herons and 5 egrets it looked more like titchwell. blackwit still
8th: spoonbill which flew off west


dispatching an emperor dragonfly



elsewhere a green sand and common sand down the cuckmere on 29th june