'Branta Clause!'

Well I'm still posting even though it's frequently causing me to tear my hair out (what little I have left). Amazingly I didn't have any trouble uploading the few poor pics I'd taken this week but frustratingly I was unable to initially increase their size once they were uploaded. Usually you have the option of small, large or largest and I normally go for large (as largest goes into the margins) but this week it wouldn't give me the option until just by chance I cut and pasted them in again and it then worked, albeit briefly! Whats that all about? Anyway here are the latest..
 

Swannery birding highlights of the week...

10th to 16th December 2012

 

It was December WeBs (Wetland Bird Survey) Count day today and the results for The Swannery and the adjacent Abbotsbury stretch of The Fleet (reproduced below) pretty much sum up the numbers and variety of the waterbirds seen this week, The only other waterbirds to add to the tally were the four Barnacle Geese that flew east on Wednesday...





No not Santa and his reindeer but Branta and rainclouds!
You'll have to take my word for it that these are Barnacle Geese but quite an evocative pic nevertheless I feel...



...and the same shot again but more heavily cropped.

My gut feeling is that these Branta geese were truly wild birds, along with the two seen last week and also the flock of fifty plus seen recently at nearby West Bexington...but I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

The results of today's WeBS were...

Mute Swan 515

Black Swan 2

Greylag Goose 1

Canada Goose 72

Shelduck 35

Wigeon 60

Gadwall 27

Teal 360

Mallard 426

Mallard (domestic) 7

Pintail 11

Shoveler 29 (120+ in the week)

Pochard 690

Tufted Duck 313

Scaup 7 (9 in the week)

Long-tailed Duck 2 (3 still in the week)

Goldeneye 10

Red-breasted Merganser 30

Little Grebe 8

Great Crested Grebe 10

Cormorant 5

Little Egret 4

Grey Heron 2

Moorhen 10

Coot 1,000

Lapwing 300

Dunlin 1

Snipe 17

Redshank 4

Turnstone 2 (new in)

Kingfisher 1

Black-headed Gull 81

Mediterranean Gull 23

Common Gull 83

Herring Gull 7

Great Black-backed Gull 4

Thanks as always to Alan, Ian and Mike for their help.

 

This week's raptors included the regular male Marsh Harrier which was again joined today by an apparent adult female and also of note was a Merlin that dashed through on Wednesday.

 

Passerines highlights were several Redwings, a few Jays still, the two Nuthatches, only one or two Chiffchaffs, a flyover Yellowhammer, a brief Lesser Redpoll among several Siskins, at least one Bullfinch and best of all, among a small flock of Goldcrests, a Firecrest (presumably last weeks bird).

 

One of the (Eurasian) Nuthatches (with a Blue Tit) on my Grove Lane feeders. One of two birds present, they were seen to display this week at the entrance to a tree cavity in the same tree that the last breeding birds occupied a few years back, so fingers crossed for the spring!