The Estate and Backsand again

Todays outing was a very similar day to yesterday in that it started with a tour of the estate and ended at Backsand. Unlike yesterday today there were a decent number of birds around the estate though these were restricted to the “Whitehouse” and “Oasis”with little being seen in the Elms and gullies. The totals were - willow warblers (20+),  a similar number of white throats, a lesser white throat and a lot of green woodpeckers.

From the sea wall south of the sailing club we found 5 wheatears (they had been reported earlier in the week but have a habit of disappearing completely) and along the fence with the golf club there were 3 or 4 corn buntings. One was particularly interesting in that it had a near white tail (though not so easy to see in this picture).

Corn bunting with a white tail

The wood sandpiper was still on Restharrow as were a heron and little egret but while we were there 5 little ringed plovers turned up – 4 juveniles and 1 adult.

Wood Sandpiper

Little Ringed Plover

Steve Ashton was also at Restharrow so after a coffee at the Obs I met up with Steve and we went down to Backsand.

On the scrape were 2 wood sandpipers, 11 greenshank, 8 green sandpipers and 4 common sandpipers. Plus a little egret, a l;ittle grebe and a family of tufted ducks.

Camera wise it was pretty slow with only the woodsand, common sand coming really close though a greenshank was just about within shooting distance.

Wood Sandpiper

Common Sandpiper

We waited for the redshank to turn up at high tide but they didn’t so Steve spent the rest of the time discussing his (ex) in-growing toe-nail.

Halfway through the session we noticed Gadget in the adjacent hide and we joined him for a little while then scrounged a lift back to Newdowns.

It was good to have the A700 back and it performed perfectly – thankfully the pictures were of better quality than with the A200 (though I’m sure Steve will continue to insist on me swapping to Canon).

One thing I noticed whilst processing the common sandpiper pictures was it had a palmation between the outer and middle toe. I assume this is normal. Click on the picture for a larger version or see my flickr site.

The palmation can be seen on it's left foot.

Palmation can be seen on it's rught foot