Wednesday 1 August 2012

Bring your waders

Flooded fields at Swineham
 When I wrote this post in April I thought I knew what heavy rain was. That was before the events of early July which saw the winter flood meadows around my local gravel pits at Swineham became summer floods.

Black-tailed Godwits
One flooded field near the pits has looked good for waders for several weeks, but there haven't been any. That all changed last night when over 150 of 5 species turned up - the great majority Black-tailed Godwits, many still in smart summer plumage, but also 7 Snipe and singles of Greenshank and Lapwing.

Snipe
Star of the show though was a single Wood Sandpiper, which showed distantly at first but was feeding actively and eventually came quite close. If the White-rumped Sandpiper present on Brownsea today sticks until Saturday it could be a good wader week in Poole Harbour...

A couple of Common Gulls were also good to see. I could have stayed longer, but for the second time in as many weeks biting insects forced me to retire early having lost several pounds of flesh to their unwelcome attentions.

No comments:

Post a Comment