Swannery Birding Highlights Of The Week..
Monday 26th May to Sunday 1st June 2014...
Bird of the week was the Swannery's second Roseate Tern of the year. Bearing no rings and pretty pink it was clearly a different individual to that seen the previous week...
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| Above two photo's Tuesday's adult Roseate Tern on The Tern Island with Common Terns |
It (or possibly yet another) re-appeared on Saturday and gave closer views...
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Above three pics - Saturday's adult Roseate Tern...
It seemed to have slightly shorter tail streamers than Tuesday's bird. |
Another dark-billed tern was also present this week...
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| This week's dark-billed Common Tern |
It is no doubt the bird showing some characteristics of the Asian form that has been present for the last few summers... it has virtually an all black bill, has dark red legs and is slightly darker grey - but it just doesn't seem to quite tick all the boxes of a classic eastern longipennis, so maybe a hirundo/longipennis intergrade?
Apart from the terns it was a rather quiet week and with passerine/near passerine spring passage now seemingly all but over it was left to a few tardy northward bound waders, namely Dunlin and Whimbrel, to pad out the notebook. Slightly more notable however was the, presumably already southward bound, Green Sandpiper that was a 'heard only' on Friday and Saturday.
So that was the best I could do this week, not bad I suppose, one or possibly two Roseate Terns but it would have been nice to have added Bee-eater to my Swannery list seeing that four flew along the west Dorset coast at the weekend, oh well one day!
I'll leave you with a few pics of some 'great' birds... Great Crested Grebes and a couple of a recently fledged Great Spotted Woodpecker at The Swannery this week...
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| Despite being present all year round in The Swannery embayment and regularly displaying the species never nests here so presumably summering birds are 2nd calendar year birds that are still sexually immature? |
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| One of a brood of recently fledged Great Spotted Woodpeckers in The Swannery withy-bed |
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