Friday 8 December 2017

Druridge Bay ... birding in the sunshine ... Red-necked Grebe, Long-tailed Duck and a Shrike to round off the day ...

At QE 11 Country Park a Red-necked Grebe in an interesting plumage state was cruising around while hundreds of school children took part in a cross country run around the periphery of the lake ...


... moulting out of juvenile into first-winter plumage, the neck showed significant red tones while the ear coverts had the dark stripes characteristic of juvenile grebes ...


... that lovely yellow bill shone out even in the murky December light ...



... it seems that this location is one where feeding the birds - Swans, Ducks, Gulls - is still permitted ... so, quite a nice spot to get a good look at some gulls ...

... among the Herring Gulls was this nice Scandinavian Herring Gull  Larus argentatus argentatus 


... with a mantle significantly darker than the nearby more southerly Herring Gulls  Larus argentatus argenteus and quite significant head and neck streaking ...


... the P10 pattern is visible on the far side wing and reveals a large white mirror, narrow sub-terminal black band and small white tip typical of birds of this race ...
... the small dark gonydeal spot on the lower mandible is probably indicative of this being a fourth-winter bird ...

... going on from here and approaching Cresswell Pond a large flock of Pink-footed Geese were in a field behind the cafe ...


... they were on the move and slowly drifted off west while further skeins came in-off the sea ...

Linton Lakes had some gulls also and this individual was intriguing ...


... the bill was dark with a pale tip - reminiscent of a first-winter Great Black-backed Gull - and was small and short ... the eye was pale, consistent with a second or third -winter Herring Gull and the brown in the wing coverts and tertials also fitted in with that age ... the head shape was rather more rounded than a typical Herring Gull and the bird looked small for a Herring Gull which is what it presumably was ... fascinating, but time to move on ...

Cresswell Pond had some pristine male Red-breasted Mergansers ...


... and Lapwings looked lovely in the sunshine ...


... and the juvenile / first-winter birds showing nice pale fringes to the mantle and scapular feathers giving a subtly scalloped appearance ...

In the ground by the sand dunes a good size flock of Goldfinches and Twite fed on the seeds of tall plants ...


... the Twite showing their strongly streaked mantles and warm buff / brown unstriated throats ...

On East Chevington Lake a female Long-tailed Duck was a nice surprise but its erratic and frequent diving made the long range viewing tricky and phone-scoping nigh-on impossible as my best result shows ...


In failing light we scanned the dark bare-twigged bushes at Prestwick Carr and amazingly found a Great Grey Shrike that had been seen intermittently there in recent weeks ...


... it dropped into the long vegetation and then returned to another high perch ...


... before finally going presumably to roost ... 



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