Scaup

 

First-winter male Scaup - Mudbank

 

A first-winter Scaup off Mudbank was a slight surprise this morning. It's so mild that you don't expect ducks to be moving. Also off there were 55 Pintail.

An earlier check off the seafront, before football, produced 9+ Red-throated Divers on a glass-like sea, along with c10+ Great Crested Grebes and c40+ very distant Common Scoters. There were just a couple Chiffchaffs in the sallows below Foxholes and the female Black Redstart was in its usual spot on the Shelly Beach apartments. Three distant geese off there ditched down into the bite at Dawlish Warren. I only caught the back end of them but they looked like Greylags.

 

 

 

This Green Woodpecker is usually knocking around the Warren View/Mudbank area. Yesterday it was perched, thrush-like, in somebody's back garden down at Mudbank. I photographed it whilst out walking the dog with Lu. There were also c40+ House Sparrows in the same garden. A male Blackcap was in gardens a few doors up from our place on Belle Vue Road, and a Mistle Thrush has been in temporary residence on Warren View playing fields for the last week or so.