Knot Landing

September 24th

Barking Bay again came up trumps again with a mid-morning visit meeting up with Paul, the idea being to hopefully bag a good wader as the rising tide came in. The plan went very well when Paul located a Knot on the fast disappearing mud, not only a year tick but also a site tick. Like other Knot I have seen it was completely unfazed by us standing there, Greg had also joined us and we managed to get some half decent photos, it only flew when the tide covered the mud completely and it went to roost.





Knot (click on photos to enlarge)

Going to roost

The sky promised a rarer large raptor but none materialised unfortunately but 2 Hobbies put in an appearance, an adult and a juvenile, in particular the adult was present for most of our visit and spent its time picking off Common/Ruddy Darters. It also at one point went into a flock of Linnets, spectacular stuff, happy to say the Linnets evaded it.

 Adult Hobby at speed after Linnets

During the course of the morning we split up, Paul saying I’m going to find a Wryneck, sod me he bloody did, well done to him. After a frantic fully laden dash across the grassland dodging the booby traps (rabbit holes ) I arrived sweating at the spot, despite an hours search we could not relocate it. He did manage to get some photos of it when first located so worth having a look on his blog. http://www.hawkysbirdingblog.blogspot.com/

 This is what a Wryneck does to you, well done mucker.

The river other than the Knot was pretty quiet, a single Common Tern seen distantly at the Outfall and 2 Common Sandpipers in the usual spot.

Wheatear

Whinchat

Another year tick came in the shape of a calling Cetti’s Warbler, as they are now doing very well they should start to colonise the site, it has the right habitat and could hold 2 or 3 males.

Also seen were

Wheatear – 2 juveniles
Whinchat – 2
Common Snipe – 1 over
Skylark – 14 all up together
Shelduck – numbers increasing with 116 sitting out the high tide.

Not sure if I can get over on Sunday, Peregrine stuff, I reckon the next wader has got to be a Curlew Sandpiper, there seems to be one up and down this section of the Thames, who knows.