Tuesday 19 August 2014

Colour-ringed Kittiwake


Good numbers of terns on sandbars off the seafront first thing this morning. There were 80+ common tern in with c100+ sandwich tern. A juvenile kittiwake sported deep yellow darvic rings on both legs but neither Nick nor myself could get any further details and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there were other colours present. If anybody has any ideas I'd be interested to know. Chris Townend has recently recorded colour-ringed birds on nearby Straight Point, that originated from Brittany, so that may well be the origin of this bird. Also this morning 1 sanderling, 1 dunlin, 1+ redshank, 1+ juv mediterranean gull, 3 ringed plover, the second-winter little gull and a fly-over tree pipit.
On Orcombe Point migrants included 1 willow warbler, 3+ tree pipit and 6+ yellow wagtail. The yellow wagtails were my first of the autumn on Orcombe. I counted 5 birds feeding in with cattle and 6 flew overhead just as I was getting back to the car. It's possible the 6 included the 5 seen earlier which is why I'm not counting 11! One bird was a smart grey-variant juvenile. It was almost impossible to get good views as the grass is too long but I managed to capture a record shot of it.


Grey-variant Yellow Wagtail.


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