Seasalter, Buzzards and Raven

Wednesday 4th

Its been a few days since my last visit so I braved the 2 deg. icy blast straight in off the sea. The tide was just covering the last of the mudflats and lots of dunlin and turnstones were feeding close to the beach, however nothing was visible on the rough sea.  The walk into the plots revealed that some moron had emptied a sack of household rubbish into the dyke by the concrete bridge, what's going on in their heads?  Nothing much else to see as I walked out towards the conifers, just a couple of snipe and crows.

I wanted a good walk this morning so I walked up towards Castle Coote on the LNR finding 3 pairs of stonechats and 4 mipits.  On the fields behind, a few lapwing and over the back c.300 golden plover. It was nice to see the return of c.500 brents which I saw earlier flying onto the mudflats from the NRA, there's normally only a handful.  On the walk back a couple of grey plovers and redshank on the beach, both sporting leg irons.

The field opposite the Sportsman seems to hold lots of curlew and lately plenty of dunlin, redshank, goldies and turnstones. The sheep were already lambing in this freezing weather, poor little things!  A beautiful male marsh harrier flushed all the birds and continued over onto the LNR.

 Looks warm in the sun but its freezing!

PM.

Monday afternoon I had a call from Geoff who had seen a raven but I was otherwise engaged at 'softplay' with the 'erberts' so this afternoon I thought I would have a look myself.  Easily done from inside the car on the 'rise' just past the Sportsman or further on at the sub-station entrance, no need to get cold, this is the way to 'bird'.  Whilst sat in the car I saw c.500 lapwings, 1 heron, 2 buzzards flying low across the marsh, ocassionally landing  on posts, a pair of marsh harriers and yes, the raven. Mainly seen on the ground and distant, usually on the mounds, I first saw it towering over a lamb but it was seen off by the mother and then later one of the  buzzards had caught something and the raven appeared and started fighting with the buzzard for posession. There was a good number of duck in the hidden dyke as when flushed by the buzzard, a dozen gadwall, c.50 teal took flight,  seen from the sub station entrance