Happy Birthday Joel!

My son's tenth birthday today so no birding. Well I say no birding -  we went down to the river this evening to scoff fish and chips as the sun started to lower, and I took my scope so I could do a quick check of the river. Whilst trying to remain focused on the birthday celebrations I happened to notice huge numbers of terns dropping on to the sandbar in the estuary. Unfortunately the light in the evenings is poor from this side of the river but I reckon there were about 1000 terns, mostly silhouetted 'commics'. They were extremely difficult to count but I got to 500 and reckon I was only about half way through, so somewhere close to 1000 seems reasonable. I did manage to pick out at least 2 Black Terns but there may well have been more. Other than that, 16 Wigeon, 2 Knot, 2 Whimbrel, 1 Bar-tailed Godwit and 3 Mediterranean Gull noted.