September 24th, 2017
Another beautiful sunny morning at Pennington Marsh and I decided to
walk my normal circuit in reverse, first out past Fishtail and to
Keyhaven and back past Butts and Jetty Lagoon and finally past
Pennington Lagoon and Shoveler Pools. I had much of the morning to spare
after dropping Tobias off so my birding was very leisurely.
There were very large numbers of hirundine passing west overhead with
many hundreds of birds, I estimated 750 House Martin, 150 Swallow and
75 Sand Martin but this was a fraction of the birds and numbers may have
been 2-3x this easily. I was disapointed at how few waders there were
on Fishtail but three Spoonbill showed very well as they fished actively
in the lagoon.
After the recent numbers of Baird’s Sandpiper and Semipalmated
Sandpiper that have been in the country I spent some time grilling the
waders and searching the shallows at Keyhaven Lagoon but other than 25
Grey Plover, one Spotted Redshank, one Knot and 12 Dunlin there was
little to be seen.
There were increased numbers of wildfowl with 12 Wigeon and 25 Teal
on the lagoon. In the dead gorse at the back of the lagoon I was pleased
to see three juvenile Whinchat. On past Butts Lagoon three Bearded
Reedling showed well, a male, female and a juvenile bird.
The spit off Butts Lagoon had a good gathering of waders with 75 Grey
Plover, 150 Dunlin and four Knot while 17 Sandwich Tern loafed on the
mud nearby.
Walking out to Jetty Lagoon the female Red-breasted Merganser was
still present but an unfamiliar wader call grabbed my attention and as I
got onto the bird I was convinced I had something decent but then I
realised I had heard the call before but just in a slightly different
habitat and I soon realised the bird was a Purple Sandpiper – still, a
patch tick so not to be sniffed at.
Parking on the edge of the common and walking to the area of bramble scrub that the bird frequents it was not long before I located the bird and over the next 1.5 hours I had some great views as the bird fed on cranefly and on one occasion took a Sericomyia silentis (hoverfly) which it swallowed whole – it barely touched the sides.
Also here were six Whinchat, three Wheatear and four Yellow Wagtail. At 17:15 it was time to head for home.
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