Thursday, 31 March 2016

SMART WHEATEAR

A smart male wheatear was found near the beach by the Youth Camp on Wednesday 30th by Andy Field. A sign that spring migration is under way. No doubt this brief stop-over will be for only a day or so.

The brightly marked wheatear stayed in the same area of seawall during the middle part of the day, posing here for Andy to take this picture above. Early wheatears stopping off in March have been hard to find in recent years.

Also present on the Rewsalls marshes were five Mediterranean gulls, a pair pictured above with a black-headed gull, also a Cetti's warbler singing along the ditches, reed bunting, common buzzard, 20 shelduck, little egret, 25 brent geese and 10 curlew.
Five chiffchaffs were noted along the hedges while offshore 50 great crested grebes were seen.

Four adders were cuddled up together at the park on Wednesday, all of them in this picture above.

A second chiffchaff was singing again from the car park on Tuesday 29th having first arrived two days earlier. Two sparrowhawks flew past the car park in the morning and a common buzzard was seen displaying high in the air to the north-west of the park.
A corn bunting was seen on the park cliff on Tuesday by Annie Gordon.

A Cetti's warbler was discovered singing near the Oyster Fishery on Tuesday by Martin Cock, in addition to one at Maydays farm singing loudly from the scrubby-sided borrowdyke two days earlier. It appears a small influx of 3 Cetti's warblers have arrived on the Island in recent days, in addition to the existing resident at the park pond.

On Friday 25th near Meeting Lane, 300 redwing were feeding in a field and three chiffchaffs were noted by Martin.

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