Saturday, December 01, 2007



Above - NU21 Tetrad S.

A sunny but cool day with a moderate W4. 60% cloud.

As the weather wasn't too bad this morning I thought I would do an atlas tetrad at Boulmer. The tetrad is the one above. I parked at the lifeboat hut where it says PC at the bottom of the map, walked north along the shoreline as far as Howdiemont Sands at the top. Here I moved up onto the landward side and followed the bridlepath back south to the car. This took 2 hours.

In that time I counted the 48 species below -

Wigeon 9
Mallard 30
Eider 25
Goldeneye 4
Red breasted Merganser 3
Grey Partridge 4
Red throated Diver 3
Great Northern Diver 1 a belter watched eating pipefish close in to the village.
Cormorant 1
Shag 2
Grey Heron 3
Kestrel 1
Oystercatcher 60
Ringed Plover 2
Golden Plover 6
Grey Plover 8
Lapwing 315
Knot 9
Purple Sandpiper 1
Dunlin 2
Curlew 40
Redshank 104
Turnstone 48
Black headed Gull 107
Common Gull 19
Herring Gull 209
Great Black Backed Gull 20
Razorbill 2
Woodpigeon 32
Collared Dove 14
Skylark 1
Rock Pipit 6
Pied Wagtail 4
Wren 5
Dunnock 6
Robin 4
Stonechat 3
Blackbird 1
Mistle Thrush 1
Magpie 1
Jackdaw 6
Rook 8
Carrion Crow 11
Starling 206
House Sparrow 27
Goldfinch 12
Snow Bunting 3 One was in the cattle feed at the north end, the other two were down to 4 yards on the main bridlepath just south of the footbridge.
Reed Bunting 2

A good list especially as there were none of the usually common species such as Linnet, Meadow Pipit, Chaffinch, Song Thrush, Blue Tit etc that would be expected here on any other day.

1 comment:

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