Defiance.

I'd finally had recovered enough to be able to lug a scope and so dragged myself out on Sunday.

Defying the plague, the weather, and quite probably anything even vaguely like sense, but I had Unfinished Business.

 

 

Yes, it was raining hard, sideways, and the roads were rather riverine in places, but that wasn't stopping me. I headed up and then left a bit, with the route giving a group of 20-30 Oystercatcher in flight over fields near Sith*, before reaching my target;

Spotted Redshank

There you are.

Zooming back out a bit,

Arch Brook

When I first arrived, the Spotshank was on the left of this shot, high up the Arch Brook - VERY close to me - and I used my car as a hide to get a briefly wonderful view, before a van came zooming by [despite the flood waters] and flushed it off to the Teign shore, out there in the distance, where I got that photo up there [actually still good views {at 75x}, but the camera likes not the heavy rain]. The Spotshank worked its way back along the shallows and into the mouth of the brook, where after skirting around a Greenshank, it vanished into the now rather inset channel.

After managing to miss the Freminton bird back in January, and every other chance in Devon since, I was a rather happy yearlister.

Just getting a nice sustained view [oh, if it had stayed so close, though], of a feeding bird was a pleasure [normally you only get close-ish views of ones asleep at Bowling Green] in and of itself.

Also present were a handful of Redshank, single Curlew and Oyk, plus Common and BHGs.

Later on, I was unable to resist the lure of the Nose, where all the rain had indeed fired up the slick. Unfortunately, the wind had come around to a strong, gusty NE-E, and it was a bit, er, tasty.

[Ok, actually the exact opposite, really, with the slick being blasted on shore....]

Spot the Little Gull

[You'll be doing very well. I couldn't find one....]

 

Boom

A scattering of Guillemots and Razorbills on the sea with the Shags and Corms, a half dozen Gannets, a Fulmar, and a couple of Kittiwakes, plus usual gull spp.

Drat.

But I was out there.

And I aten't ded.

[Yet]

Be Seeing You...

[[* Nobody types Stokeinteignhead more often than they have to. Also the acronym. ]]