Sunday 29 January 2017

The Heavy Frost

23rd Jan.

One of the heaviest frosts I've seen this morning and Seasalter looked the Arctic wastes of the far north. Fortunately, it was brilliant sunshine a little later which gave excellent viewing conditions especially for photography. 
I had a quick looked around the plots where the dykes had about an inch and a quarter covering of ice forcing all the moorhens onto the grassy places, a few running about on the ice.  A quick look revealed a pair of stonechats, robin and two song thrushes, other than that, seemed deserted.  Time for some photography though, all the trees and bushes were covered with a thick coating of ice crystals making super subjects.

 The dark area on the sea is ice!






Back to the seashore where the tide was just leaving the beach and waders were eager to feed allowing some great shots in the clear conditions. I spent well over an hour just sitting with the birds allowing them to approach me whilst I took photos.  Lots of dunlin, 44 black-tailed godwits, a few bar-tailed godwits, grey plovers, 1 lone wigeon.










Moved on to the LNR where the lower beach was frozen near the breakwaters. At the water's edge I counted 240 shelduck that seem to be a recent big rise in the population, c1000 brents with 14 teal among them. Very little on the landward side, except 2 s.thrushes, 2 blackbirds, 1 mipit and 1 reed bunting.


2 comments:

Bernie Weight said...

Nice posting and excellent pictures Mike

Seafood Recipes said...

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