Dave Pearsons
Landguard Bird Observatory Saturday, 27th October 2018 Leader: Nigel Odin It was the first really cold day of autumn but 12 members assembled for our annual visit to the observatory. While regular birders might say it was quiet on the bird front, 5 new members to outdoor meetings found the morning very interesting. Someone once said to me “there is no such thing as a bad bird just better ones”, in fact it may have been our President, and so we all enjoyed seeing migration, opportunism and birds that are quite happy to spend the winter months at Landguard. The cold wind meant that many nets were closed, birds come first, and so the ringing demonstration by Nigel was limited to just 2 Blackbirds. In fact one Blackbird caught in the Heligoland, a re-trap, was considered underweight and was immediately let go to enable it to continue to feed and was not processed. It was interesting to see the melee (estimated at around 1000) of large gulls following
the ships as they churned up Whiting & Whitebait. In that throng, the group looked for birds other than gulls and just one Bonxie was spotted trying to get a gull to disgorge its fish. The Bonxie settled back on the sea and unfortunately was not seen by all those present. Cormorants, a regular bird at Landguard but under threat elsewhere, were seen going out to their feeding grounds and coming back hopefully with a full stomach. Regular counts are made of their movements from the Observatory. Later we were treated to a very close Redthroated Diver and a Common Scoter. Migration was also observed, 3 late Swallows going south was very pleasing for all of us, other migrating birds included Goldfinch, Meadow Pipit, Skylark and Starling. Both the latter coming in off the North Sea from the continent. A Red Admiral was also seen to join in with the migration.
T H E H A R R I ER – Wi n t e r 2 0 1 8
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