A birding morning at Landguard

Finding I had a morning to myself, down in Felixstowe, I decided to go for a walk around Landguard.  Walking in from the north car park there seemed to be little about, apart from droves of dog walkers.  The flowers were nice though, I was impressed by the carpet of common stork's-bill Erodium cicutarium.  Further along I noticed that there were many white flowers among the more usual pink ones.

Common Stork's-bill

A small upright bird on the ground nearly caught me out, thinking it would be a wheatear, but the strong eye stripe and streaky back made me look again in time to see that it was a whinchat.  A wheatear was present further along just for comparison.

I walked along the nice new boardwalk to the point, where a purple sandpiper popped out from under the timbers.  So I got a chance to play at digiscoping.  It was a bit dark under there so not brilliant results,but a bit better when it came up higher and spent some time having a good preen.

Purple sandpiper

Walking back towards the fort I almost missed the juvenile dunlin feeding quite happily just on the seaward side of the wall.  It was very approachable, nicely marked AND in good light so I'm a bit happier with this shot.  It's not easy this digiscoping - I find it very difficult to see the screen to check the focusing - maybe I need to get a different camera (any excuse).

Dunlin