Stewchat...

Woke this morning to find a cold NW2 and a light dusting of snow, the first this winter.

No birding today, but out on Sunday with JWR and Rob. We did my BTO Low Tide count between Foxton Golf Club and Boulmer village. These low tide surveys are hopeless. At low tide there are at least two or three areas of rocky skeers stretching up to half a mile or more out to sea. This, plus the assistance of two dozen bait diggers and a hatful of sea anglers fishing a competition made counting very difficult if not impossible.

On the Boulmer patches we had -

Oystercatcher 34
Ringed Plover 55
Grey Plover 7
Sanderling 70
Purple Sandpiper 2
Dunlin 101
Bar tailed Godwit 9
Curlew 5
Redshank 59
Turnstone 74
Cormorant 4
Shag 4
Shelduck 3
Mallard 2
Eider 55
Goldeneye 1

Later we did Johns Plover Survey near Eglingham. Although we did not see any of the main target species we had a nice Raven fly over 'cronking' his guts out, 100+ Fieldfare, 6 Redwing, 51 Yellowhammers at a sheep trough, 4 Buzzards, and 30+ Skylarks. In the wood nearby there were 2 Bullfinches, a Lesser Redpoll and a Treecreeper.

In the evening we checked out Boulmer village very briefly and found 80+ Eiders feeding very close to the beach were the wave action disturbed the rotten weed again.

I've just seen Darrens notes for StMary's (see links). His sea watch has me a bit envious...pity I cant get out til the weekend. I fancied that this change to a cool northerly would give us a change in birds. Ah well...