The North Bay

Full day of filming again today, starting in the Dene, but finishing at St Mary's North Bay.





Whilst lying flat on the sand a few Rock Pipits began coming closer, as the tide covered most of the rotting seaweed.




This individual caught my eye…





I felt fairly confident that this was a Scandinavian Rock Pipit (littoralis), with its pink tinged underparts, reduced streaking and grey neck and mantle, with not seeing this race before I had a look at Mike's paper, and then sent a quick email to Alan and Mike, and it was confirmed. 

St Mary's

I'm in the process of producing a short documentary for my final media project at University, one of the sites featured is St Mary's Island. Awakening to glorious sunshine I headed down to film the waders.

John was already on the beach, at its northern end, where the majority of the birds were concentrated, being pushed gently closer as the tide came in. Sanderling, Knot, Dunlin, Bar-Tailed Godwit, Ringed Plover, Redshank, Golden Plover, Grey Plover, and Purple Sandpiper were all present, along with Rock Pipit, Pied and a single Grey Wagtail. I didn't set out to take any images, but snapped a few whilst filming.





Experimenting with a few filming techniques I noticed two colour ringed individuals, one Sanderling and one Turnstone, I've reported both, hopefully some info will be returned.





The wind soon began to pick up, as did the waves causing a very mobile group of birds to feed rapidly up and down the beach.







A quick stop in at Red House Farm on the way back was surprising, finding that last winters Tree Sparrows had returned. I'm hoping to get some boxes up over the next couple of days, to see if they'll hang around.