Finding What You Weren't Looking For

Is always one of the fun things about birding.


So, on Friday I defied the weather to head over to Exminster/Powderham Marshes to seek Green Sands, as I have yet to see a one this year and it just wouldn't do. Likewise Sandy Martins, and other things.

I noted on heading out on the long trek to the Powderham platform that they've been very busy hacking down all manner of trees here there and everywhere but still can't seem to find five minutes to sort the drainage on the path out, which, while probably of marginal benefit to the birds [ie. reducing disturbance by keeping the public ON the paths] would be of great benefit to the public.
If anything, removing the vegetation next to the pathway makes the birds less well off, due to increased disturbance from every slipping hopping sinking increasingly-brown victim visitor paying more attention to their feet than being unobtrusive...

Ahem.

Very pretty

The White Thing

[I did have to carefully stalk it to get this, though]

Anyway, as well as a Snow Goose of 'unknown' provenance [I suspect it's the survivor of the Gruesome Twosome of the Marsh of years past, myself], there were a few other scenic sights to see, not least once again the spectacle of the Marshie putting a poor horde of Wigeon to flight. This time I was a bit closer, so I got said harrier on camera;

No cropping

No male characteristics

A lot of scanning of Powderham's refuge from the slings and arrows of outrageous Foxies gave exactly no Green Sands, despite three having been repeatedly reported [said reports also included a Ruff, which likewise proved invisible], but a Sand Martin zoomed over a couple of times. There were birds visible, though;

Peregrine: "I wonder where the ::Burps::  Green Sands went..?"

However, the utter star of Show and maybe even Month was this little lady;

Merlin!!

Carefully stalked,

notice difference against light background

Even visible from the platform

Digiscoped!!

She was sat there for twenty minutes..  :D

Large numbers of finches and smaller numbers of buntings about the fields, though nothing unusual with them.

Time pressed, so I didn't go on over the river - a pity as it turned out BGM was covered in Garganey - but I was still grinning when I got home.

Too long since my last Merlin, far too long since one sat and posed [you remember the female near Ryder's Hill on Dartmoor? Sat on a big granite doughnut? Think she was the last to be photo-able and that was about four years ago!]

Well, I suffered some consequences for this, but I am undeterred and will be having some fun this week, oh yes. I will also be posting older Patch news, really I will, and I will probably resist loads of pictures of the 41+ Ladybirds scurrying about my super-sunny flat!


Be Seeing You...