Our usual cooked breakfast at The Watering Hole was delicious as always as we admired the scenery with the sand between our toes and offshore I managed to find 4 Sandwich tern, a few gannet and a juvenile kittiwake.
Gorgeous Perranporth
Brown Trout
Mallard
Scavenging Rook
On the beach were the usual roosting herring and black-headed gulls and amongst them were 6 1st winter Mediterranean gulls which gave some good views.
Mediterranean Gull
Mediterranean Gull
Mediterranean Gull
Mediterranean Gull
Friday 14th September and with another dreaded night shift looming I caught the bus out to Wembury for a walk. It was cool and overcast but sunny spells did develop and it was a pleasant mornings walk.
No moths in the toilet block but a clouded yellow, a small copper, speckled wood, a male common blue and small whites were flitting about and a few bloody nose beetles were seen including a mating pair.
The beach near the sewage pipe held the most interest on the high tide with 9 Bar-tailed Godwit, 7 Ringed Plover and 15 Dunlin feeding on the seaweed mass and 9 Mediterranean gulls (5 adult winter, 3 1st winter and 1 2nd winter) roosting on the beach amongst the herring, lesser black backed, black headed and great black backed gulls.
Bar-tailed Godwit
Bar-tailed Godwit
Odd Gull (top right)
Odd Gull
Odd Gull (top right)
Odd Gull
Odd Gull
Odd Gull
Odd Gull
Odd Gull
By lunchtime the clouds had rolled back in and I enjoyed a pasty on a deserted beach before heading home, seeing 5 swallows flying over heading west as I walked up the valley from the beach to catch the bus.
Sunday 16th September and I was undecided as to where to visit for the high tide roost - Bowling Green Marsh or Dawlish Warren. I plumped for Bowling Green and on arrival at 11:15 hrs I was informed that I had missed both curlew sandpiper and osprey seen earlier - bugger! A report of a wood sandpiper at nearby Darts Farm had me heading over there for a look with local birder Keith but we couldn't find it, seeing 2 green Sandpiper, 3 snipe and a few dunlin, lapwing and black-tailed godwits before a hunting sparrowhawk put everything up. We didn't see or hear the wood sandpiper in the commotion but later we heard that a wood Sandpiper had been seen flying around the viewing platform - bugger again!
The Marsh was quiet on a quick look from the hide with roosting redshank, curlew and black-tailed Godwit and 1 knot and 2 lapwing representing the waders and 2 tufted duck, shoveler, mallard, pintail, wigeon and teal representing the ducks.
The viewing platform was quiet too with oystercatchers, a flyover whimbrel, greenshank and a bar-tailed godwit adding to the wader species for the day amongst the curlew, redshank, dunlin and black-tailed godwits present before everything was put up by a peregrine swooping low over the mudflats. The only other sighting of note was the harbour seal hauled out on the sand bank on the dropping tide before I decided to call it a day and head off home, seeing turnstones and a kingfisher at Starcross on the journey from the train.
And I should have gone to Dawlish Warren where 2 osprey, a curlew Sandpiper and a little gull were all seen but hey ho! I did get the moth box out that night though and the next morning had 2 large ranunculus in a soggy trap with a nice shuttle-shaped dart amongst others so life isn't so bad after all.
Large Ranunculus - one of my favourite moths
Large Ranunculus
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