Steve's Birding,Wildlife & Walking Blog: Patch Watch 2018 Update.

Thursday 26 April 2018

Patch Watch 2018 Update.

The last two visits have been pretty productive to my local patch between East Halton and Goxhill,mid way along the Humber Estuary,with me adding 16 species in the visits and finally breaking the difficult 100 species mark.The following post is a summary of what i saw.

15th April

Today was a bit of a wader day with singles of Whimbrel,Avocet and a rare spring Green Sandpiper all being recorded between Winter's Pond and East Halton Skitter,the latter,a nice surprise as it was flushed from the Skitter Pools along with a single Water Pipit which was still in residence.
Apart from the waders it was spring migrant passerines which featured strongly,with firsts for the patch year including Sedge Warbler,Willow Warbler,Yellow Wagtail,Blackcap,Swallow,House and Sand Martin and finally an un-countable dapper male White Wagtail at the Skitter,surely a sign of things to come.
The final additions for the visit included a single male Bearded Tit at the small pond near the ruins between the Skitter and Dawson City and an unseasonal visitor in the form of a Dark-bellied Brent Goose watched grazing on the wet pasture the Pink-footed Geese use in the winter months close to Dawson City.
So all in all today was a very productive visit,despite the summer migrants only being in small numbers so far.

22nd April

Today's visit saw a considerable jump in migrant numbers and 4 more species added to the patch year list.
The new species for the year,were all summer migrants of course and included Whitethroat,Lesser Whitethroat,Cuckoo and finally Reed Warbler,numbers for species were as follows and refer to singing males: Whitethroat - 4,Lesser Whitethroat - 5,Reed Warbler - 4,Blackcap - 7,Sedge Warbler - 12,Cuckoo - 1,Willow Warbler - 2 and Chiffchaff - 3.
A decent passage west of species included at least 14 Swallow,5 Sand Martin,1 House Martin and 5 Yellow Wagtail along with about 30 Linnet.
The only wader highlight observed was a lovely flock of 12 Whimbrel along the shoreline infront of Winter's Pond,which was a great sight to see,they are such smart birds.
A bit of a bizarre sighting today,saw a flock of 9 Coot on the Humber,something that only ever happens when the Humber Clay Pits are frozen over,so was a tad interesting.
The final highlight was a slightly tardy flock of 40 Pink-footed Geese seen crossing the Humber off Dawson City from north to south and then again over Winter's Pond heading west,with them presumably being the same birds.
So another great visit and nice to be out and about and I'm looking forward to the next one at the weekend.