Past few days on the patch..

Nice week or so at St. Mary's, with the arrival of my new scope, I was itching to get it out. To kick things off, I located the Med Gull with the Black-Head flock yesterday, and today found a cracking juvenile Scaup on the wetland! I was over the moon with this bird, and only the second time I have seen one on patch, the first time being seawatching fly-bys! Wetland first! Also had a Black Redstart on the rocks on the island last week.

 Black Redstart

 Scaup

Med Gull

Migrants!

Great day on patch with Daniel Mcgibbon, started with a seawatch with a patch tick in the form of a Slavonian Grebe (96), 2 Sandwich Terns, a Velvet Scoter and a few Canada Geese. We then went along towards Old Hartley and got a yeartick in the form of sand martin (97). Then on what we thought was the way out, we headed for the cemetery were Dan found a cracking female-type Black Redstart (98) and a male wheatear, however just as we were about to leave, we found ourselves racing along back towards Old Hartley after a male ring ouzel (patch tick) that was reported, and just got it as it flew from the fields across the path and down into the bay (99). A really good day with 2 patch life ticks and 4 patch yearticks.

 Black Redstart

Wheatear

Weasel

Welcome to Winter!

This morning I revisited St. Mary's after a rush down after sixth form yesterday to catch up with my second black redstart for patch, only my 4th in Britain, and it was a very good decision! Met up with Alan Curry in the south bay around half 8 and immediately it put in an appearance, spending most of it's time on the cliff and seaweed darting backwards and forwards. After a while, I went off and left Alan to photograph it and checked out the rest of the patch, with very little around apart from the 'resident' great-spotted woodpecker. 

So after a while, I decided to go back to see the redstart again and this time, it showed like a dream. I found by just sitting a rock and allowing the bird to get used to me, it was very tame indeed, coming within 5 feet at one point, and posing for me in the morning sun. Morning well spent!

What a stunner!

Also spent some time photographing these guys on the rocks...