Blacktoft Sands 3rd August

Twelve of us met at Blacktoft on Sunday morning (in the rain, but it soon cleared). The birding was excellent. Highlights included:

Good wader numbers and species on the eastern lagoons. Black-tailed godwits, Green sandpipers, and Spotted redshanks were showing well, and we had an excellent opportunity for some of the party who were less familiar with them to to sort out adult male Ruffs from Juvenile males and Reeves. We saw two spectacular food-passes by a female Marsh harrier to one of its fledged, male chicks. And a field at the far western end of the reserve where the ponies were grazing had a challenging mix of small passerines mainly about 100m away, but had Yellow and Pied wagtails, Meadow pipit, Stonechats and the odd Linnet coming and going. Some of the party also had excellent views of Water rail after a few of us had left the hide (grrrr!), and a brief views of a Bittern in flight. Overall, in the morning we had 45 species. 

We had dipped out on Bearded tit (with just odd brief glimpses of possibles), so after lunch some of the party stayed at Blacktoft to try and find them but I gather they were unsuccessful. However they did add Great Egret and Avocet.

The rest of us took of to North Cave and went straight down to Dryham Farm where we added (amongst other species) Egyptian goose and a Cattle egret with three Little egrets. So all all between us we had 5 species of heron. And the total number of species across both sites came in at 61.

It was a great day out – I really enjoyed it!

John