Treat this as a weekly round up, it's taken a week to sort this out and look through the many video clips and photos taken on different devices.
The star bird is the White-rumped Sandpiper found by Dan Pointon on Rossie Spit, then found again by him at the Lurgies, it's an American bird, well off course. As usual for the Lurgies it was just a bit too far away for photos but a video and frames from it show most features, badly.
I've now finished my "large farm" Corn Bunting survey so there's a few photos from that. I found my first Eider juveniles at Carnoustie along with 8 Little Gulls at Westhaven, and although there wasn't a Green Sandpiper at Murton yet, a Common Sandpiper obliged and let me film it.
The most bizarre news clip of the week where someone makes a link between feeding gulls and pollution. I don't advocate feeding gulls and won't make any comments on this story. Gull crazy (ness)
White-rumped Sandpiper Great White Egret Corn Buntings distraction display
Rossie Spit birds from Esk Road Common Sandpiper, Murton Turnstone summer plumage
White-rumped Sandpiper
Corn Bunting
Juvenile Skylark
Meadow Pipit
Juvenile Brown Hare
The same Roe Deer as before in the same place giving me the same look
The first Eider juvenile I've seen this year, it was with it's mother and two siblings. It seems to have been another very poor year for Eider and consensus at Montrose Basin is that no young were produced this year....again. It's also being said that the mussel beds in Montrose Basin have disappeared, or are very depleted. I recall watching Eider fishing at the road and rail bridges, areas where there were so many mussels that they were collected and sold in a viable fishery, I don't see anything like the numbers of mussels or Eider as there once was. Many areas of the mud are now green with weed, shingle beds have silted up, is it due to nitrogen enrichment from field run off upstream, have we stopped getting the numbers of floods to scour the shingle, did frost help regulate weed growth? That's something I'll ask about, is it influenced by our climate warming....
At this time of year the Lobsters shed their old shell and the fishermen have to wait until the new shell expands and hardens to resume fishing. Since diesel is very costly, many move at least some of their gear inshore to fish for crabs. Here's the result, five boats all retrieving sunks (lobster pots) very close inshore at Westhaven. I wonder what effect this intensive fishing has on the crab population?
No comments:
Post a Comment