Migrants have cleared out

I thought yesterday's murkiness hanging about until late last night might have kept any migrants on hold and even dropped some more in....not to be!

A few chiffies, blackbirds, robins and redwings and not much else, despite giving the patch a thorough flogging.

At least 1700-1800 pink feet flew N during the morning with a single skein of over 1000 birds.

A bit of excitement this afternoon, some photographers had a jack snipe right out in front of the Oddie hide, I went to twitch it but it had disapeared, so went home for lunch. Alan Gilbertson and Roger Foster found it again later and after much searching I got onto it, fast asleep on the bank, totally camouflaged. A pair of scaup were also on the big pool.



Scaup

After that a quick seawatch, lots of kitti's and gannets, red necked grebe, 12 red-throated diver, 6 goosander and then 2 skuas, together, the first was a steely grey bird, the second was a pale phase bird, both had a 'jerky' tern-like flight, both distant. I would have put them both down as arctic, but the first was so like a juvvy long-tail, with a real steely grey look......they both had the same 'jizz' , more like long-tailed than arctic....I'll leave it there.

Seawatching at Druridge can be so frutsrating!

147 jack snipe