Two Little Terns This Morning.

 24th May

Yet another day full of hopes, starting with blue skies but soon turned into SW gales and rain by mid morning.  Little tern wardening again at Castle Coote, walked up, about four and a half miles there and back seeing a few yellow wagtails on the seawall and several (5-7) corn buntings, the most I have seen in recent years. 

 At the Coote all was quiet, virtually nothing there, not even the eider however that changed when Bob Gomes came along doing a WEBS count, good company for the next one to two hours. A couple of little terns came into sight from the Creek direction.

I was not best placed to get a photo and they only went past once although they fished further out. At one point one landed for five minutes then off again. A common tern came in close to fish when I managed a couple of shots.

Later we saw the eider fly in from somewhere and land, then went on the beach for a preen, seems to have oil on it. It was high tide and the eider soon went fishing catching three or four crabs with little effort.

       After taking off the legs off the crab it swallows the rest whole then sits up briefly to make sure it                                                                            goes down.

Something I have never seen was that it swam into the lagoon and then further up the main gulley, then lost from sight.

I had to endure two rain showers, fortunately, I took my umbrella with me so didn't get very wet, the horrible weather is certainly not encouraging birds to breed yet or maybe not at all.

                                                      Just three or four shelduck seen

                                                       Meadow Pipits in plentiful supply