Spurn Day 39

Today we make a triumphant return to days. Now I will be able to lay eyes upon the chick that has, quite literally, kept me up at night. Obviously today was only a buffer shift as I spent the morning in bed recovering from the final nightshift, and this will be the final one, as it won’t be long now until said chick is ready to be on its way.

The buffer shift is usually quiet, due to the afternoons being generally quiet with birds now. There was a Black-Tailed Godwit and a few summer plumage Grey Plover in, as well as the usual suspects. Those suspects did include my Oystercatcher family, though they are now very mobile and often disappear for long spells, but their progress has been outstanding, and the change is noticeable since I left them a week ago.

In light of the fact that I would need some form of picture for the blog I grabbed a snap of one of the Dunlin behind the hut. They are really quite striking birds when you get them close, with detailed scally plumage, and a speckled black chest.

-Dunlin

The seawatch however was far from quiet. We had incredible numbers of Common Tern streaming down all evening. We also had other birds moving in impressive numbers too, making it quite some evening.

It’s hard to know where to start really, but in terms of bird orders we had 9 Manx Shearwater which was impressive and a whopping 19 Fulmar, which was an outstanding number of these birds. Wader-wise we clocked up Ringed Plover, Turnstone, Redshank, Dunlin, Knot, Sanderling and 2 Snipe coming in, the first time I have seen them on seawatch.

But todays real stars were the terns. In Common Tern we had an incredible 10,120 birds move through. They just kept on coming and coming, with a few Arctic Terns thrown in too, though there were undoubtedly more than the 81 we counted. We also counted 1 Black Tern which I can say with pride I found. But regardless of all else, let’s just think about 10,120 terns, an incredible passage and the first time that Spurn have had over 10,000 for 3 years I recall.

Species List:

Beacon Ponds: Sandwich Tern, Little Tern, Herring Gull, Black-Headed Gull, Common Gull, Greater Black-Backed Gull, Redshank, Dunlin, Sanderling, Grey Plover, Little Egret, Ringed Plover, Black-Tailed Godwit, Cormorant, Kestrel, Mallard, Mute Swan, Oystercatcher, Swallow, Sand Martin,

Seawatching: Common Tern, Sanderling, Dunlin, Woodpigeon, Herring Gull, Oystercatcher, Redshank, Turnstone, Snipe, Sandwich Tern, Black Tern, Knot, Swallow, Black-Headed Gull, Fulmar, Mediterranean Gull, Feral Pigeon, Swift, Ringed Plover, Greater Black-Backed Gull, Manx Shearwater, Arctic Tern,