Despite the gloop and murk engulfing Lloc village, I decided to continue with my original plan of heading down to the Point of Ayr for the high tide.Fortunately the visibility on the coast was somewhat better and after joining up with Mark Murphy we began to scan the mudflats as the tide began to flood in.
An adult male Peregrine was first on the scene, but instead of buzzing the assorted waders and wildfowl it elected to fly over the water on reconnaissance.
Good numbers of the commoner wildfowl around today included a few largish flocks of Wigeon floating in on the tide and plenty of Teal knocking about too, whilst a pair of drake Shovelers – probable refugees from frozen fresh pools – and a flyby Red-breasted Merganser were more unusual sightings.
Wader numbers were decent too, with the typical Dee Estuary holy trinity of Redshank, Curlew and Oystercatchers well represented, but most notable was the reappearance of ‘the’ leucistic Redshank that has been gracing the Dee for a number of winters now.
Moving over to the old hide site, it was good to bump into an old friend in the form of Ray Clarke – a top-notch local patch birder and raptor aficionado.
Almost on cue the Sparrowhawks started performing and we enjoyed cracking views of a hunting adult male and juvenile female. An adult female inspecting a field of Lapwing and Woodpigeon was spotted on the way back to the motor, thus completing a nice hat-trick.
Until later.
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