Autumn Range

Sat in the west hide at Connah’s Quay this morning it felt as if autumn had arrived as a cool north-easterly breeze coupled with a blanket of grey cloud welcomed me as I opened up the shutters.

The mudflats were very quiet for waders and wildfowl with only modest numbers of the commoner species. There were however, hundreds of Black-headed Gulls and I resigned myself to working my way through them for a Med Gull until the tide had pushed further in.

An hour later – and still no Med Gull – I gave up and had another scan down the channel. A small wader caught my eye amongst a group of three Redshanks and as I trained my scope on the bird a cracking juvenile Curlew Sandpiper emerged – superb!

With the water rising and a few more people arriving in the hide, things then started to improve. I found a pair of adult Yellow-legged Gulls roosting with twenty or so Lesser-black Backed and albeit at distance, I just managed to pick out a couple of Turnstones amongst the Oysties over towards Flint.

Frustratingly, I also thought I had found a Little Stint, but with nobody else being able to find the bird and it also being too far for a positive id, it will have to go into that long list of probables…

Next on the agenda was a hunting juvenile Marsh Harrier found by KLJ quartering the edge of the marsh on the far bank of the river.

With an hour so to spare a trot down to the bunded pools was in order and as has been the case in recent weeks they were chocker with Blackwits, Redshank, plus a count of Greenshank somewhere in the teens, and a single moulting Spotted Redshank.

All in all, pretty darn good. A boost to my Flintshire list too this year - now approaching credibility at 156!

Connah’s Quay 26.08.10

1 Curlew Sandpiper (juv)
13 Greenshank
1 Spotted Redshank
2 Turnstone
2 Yellow-legged Gull (adult)
1 Marsh Harrier (juv)

Until later.