This last week has seen mostly fair weather with some easterly winds and as such October has once again produced a great selection of birds for us to see. Waders have been showing in good numbers this week, with highest day-counts of 6 grey plovers, 3 bar-tailed godwits, 20 dunlins, 10 knots, 58 turnstones, a whimbrel, over 80 curlews and roughly 100 ringed plovers. To add to this, 6 snipe were present at Loch Connell.
Flocks of a few hundred pink-footed geese flew over nearly every day this week, being accompanied by a single barnacle goose one day (picked out by its barking call). Some pinkies were also seen grazing in a stubble field - clearly a favourite field because another day saw roughly 40 greylag geese feeding there. A flock of 14 whooper swans was spotted, including our first juvenile birds of the winter. Down in number from last week, our pale-bellied brent goose flock maxed at 100 birds.
Out on Loch Ryan itself, the total number of mute swans this week reached a high of 84 birds. 3 goldeneyes were paddling about, 4 mallards decided to visit the scar and the wigeon flock at the wig increased to 182 birds. These little whistling ducks look especially smart (and, dare I say it, cute) when waddling about on the mud at low tide. Back over the loch, small numbers of gannets were present most days, including a single juvenile bird.
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| A male wigeon looking very dapper |
One spectacular day mid-week saw 49 great-crested grebes, a red-necked grebe, 20 Slavonian grebes and 53 red-throated divers out on the loch. This day also had a male long-tailed duck - our first of the winter. I can't wait for these handsome ducks to increase in number once again. It turned out to be a great day all around - with 71 species being seen on our patch throughout the whole day!
Making its way back into the blog after a short absence, a pheasant announced its presence by calling. We made good use of our ears this week, also picking up the 'hweet' call of a chiffchaff, 2 ravens cronking, 2 jays squawking and a flock of 8 long-tailed tits alarming at a female sparrowhawk. Tit flocks are great to check through at this time of year and this week a treecreeper and goldcrests were hidden amongst the blue tits, great tits and coal tits. On top of this, a further flock of 14 long-tailed tits visited our garden.
Our garden has been particularly busy this week, with 2 greenfinches visiting, a large flock of over 60 house sparrows and a great spotted woodpecker came along two days in a row. We don't normally see woodpeckers in our garden - perhaps I should put out peanuts more often! Fieldfares made their appearance with a bang (or, in reality, a series of rattling calls) with a flock of over 60 landing in our garden hedge... okay, I'll admit that the entire flock wasn't in our hedge alone... Moving on, a grey wagtail was also very close to our garden (next door's lawn!) and - arriving later than the fieldfares - our first 5 redwings of the winter were sighted this week.
This last week has also seen good numbers of what I call 'small twittering birds'. Roughly 30 chaffinches and the same number of goldfinches 'shared' a field, although it was interesting to see that these two flocks never mixed and stuck to opposite ends of the same field. The number of greenfinches at the wig has increased (with up to 20 birds present) and the highest count of twite this week was approximately 170 birds. Occasionally dodging past these flocks, the white-winged black tern remained at the wig and was seen every day this last week. The tern managed to attract to it something that is quite a scarcity in these parts: birdwatchers! It was great to be able to meet and put some faces to readers. We also owe these readers the record of a peregrine that was seen hunting starlings in the wig fields - it certainly stood a fair chance of catching one, for there was a single flock of over 600 starlings around this week.
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| A handsome greenfinch |
This weekend was also the WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) count, so we went out to record what was present at Piltanton Burn. Highlights include a treecreeper at the golf course car park (on a gorse bush!), a flock of 584 golden plovers, 6 little egrets and 16 grey plovers. Having been on the lookout for them for the past month, to be able to get such close views of the grey plovers was a particular pleasure for me. They were even obliging enough to flap when preening to reveal their unique black 'armpit'. Some other counts include: 161 common gulls, 47 dunlin, 2 greenshank, 32 redshank, 73 ringed plovers, a sanderling, 11 shelduck, 3 snipe, 138 wigeon and 18 lapwings.
Our total of lapwings, however, was trumped by regular contributor Gill Deacon. While scanning a freshly tilled field, instead of finding the expected wheeling gull flock, Gill found a flock of approximately 50 lapwings in amongst large numbers of starlings and pied wagtails. Nice spotting!
Finally, I'll just finish off with some 'miscellaneous others' (i.e. I forgot to put them in earlier!). An adult Mediterranean gull was at the wig at the beginning of the week, looking very smart in its winter plumage. Two wheatears were seen over the week and, to end the week, two sandwich terns passed over the scar.
That must be it for this week and a heartfelt thanks for reading. I look forward to continuing to share with you the birding wonders of the wig.
[All photographs were taken by and belong to Stephen Grover, please ask for permission if you wish to use them.]
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