Saturday 17 September 2011

Sea-watching at Shingle Street

17th September

With thoughts of recent shearwater etc sightings, I suggested a visit to Shingle Street this afternoon.  I also thought there might be some butterflies and/or dragonflies about, but in the event we only saw 1 red admiral which seemed to be determined to find it's way over to Belgium.

The beach here is well vegetated with sea kale, yellow horned poppy, sea pea and sea campion.  The sea kale held an amazing number of snails, of all sizes and various colours.  The sea pea was seeding but must have been  a colourful sight earlier in the season.

We had good views of a couple of wheatears perching on the wire fence beyond the cottages, there were also several meadow pipits and sky larks in this area.

The seawatching was not particularly productive but we did see 2 small flocks of wigeon flying south, and around 40 brent geese.  A small number of terns were seen but these were too far out to identify to species.  3 sanderling flew south just off the beach. Otherwise that was about it apart from a few gulls and a cormorant.

It had been quite pleasant sitting on the beach in the sunshine, even with a moderate breeze, but after about an hour an obvious storm cloud was gathering to windward so we thought it was time to go.

Photos to follow

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