Wednesday 7 May 2014

Give me More


Weather maps continue to look great for transatlantic flights so I am sure more European vagrants will be seen over the next week - just not sure if there'll be different species.

In the meantime, I've been searching and keep on finding more of the same. But before I bombard you with photos, you should check out a post written about the Dunlin Lancy and I found last Saturday on the Birding Frontiers site - nice to see some North American sightings making it to there!!

Of course, more European Golden-Plovers have been found this week, they seem to be flocking up suggesting that they're getting ready to reorientate themselves or fly North at the very least when they get good winds.


I've now seen 5 Northern Wheatears, 4 of them today! I've only seen males so far, and they sure look smart with their masks on, unlike those brown ones we were seeing last Autumn.




Most of them are quite timid so I usually see a flash of white and black from the tail. But it's distinctive enough to know that what you're seeing is a wheatear:





Northern Gannet in the fog:



The other Greenland vagrants we're seeing are icebergs - lots of them this spring and peak season isn't even upon us yet!!





We're up to 227 European Golden-Plovers, 20 Northern Wheatears, 12 Black-tailed Godwits, 2 Common Redshanks, 1 Ross's Gull, 1 Dunlin (schinzii subspecies), and 1 Whimbrel (Eurasian subspecies).


Others that are on the radar:

Pink-footed Goose
Common Shelduck
Garganey
Little Egret
Common Ringed Plover
Eurasian Oystercatcher
Spotted Redshank
Common Greenshank
Ruff
White Wagtail
Meadow Pipit