Tuesday, 18 June 2019
Black-winged Pratincole, Frampton Marsh
I got lucky today and dropped on a black-winged pratincole at Frampton Marsh. I'm working just about 8 miles down the road on a marsh harrier survey and when the bird appeared on Birdguides as pratincole sp. at Frampton I took an early lunch and got there in about 15 minutes.
Fortunately it was best seen over the marshy grassland viewed from the road so I didn't need to spend too much time trying to find it. It performed brilliantly, hawking over the marsh at close range and flying right over our heads a couple of times. A stunning bird as are all pratincoles, it was my first black-winged pratincole since the Martin Mere bird in 1997. Good job I did go this morning, by this evening the morning sunshine had been replaced by persistent rain and surprisingly perhaps given the weather, at 6:15pm the bird was seen flying strongly north and was not seen again all evening.
It was actually a pretty decent day all round at Frampton today, apart from the pratincole I also saw summer plumage black-necked grebe, two Mediterranean gulls, a pair of red-crested pochard, spoonbill, short-eared owl, 100+ avocets, 200 knot, marsh harrier and a variety of other commoner marsh birds.
Photographing this bird was a bit like trying to photograph a swift, so whilst I accept that this photo and the next are distant and slightly out of focus, so what, they capture the bird perfectly over the marsh. I'm happy with them!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
To be honest I did have an inkling of what today might bring when I wrote yesterdays blog post! A birder on yesterdays crossing ...
-
I was at the top of Billinge Hill watching a tree pipit this morning when I received news that there had been a Hudsonian godwit at Bu...
-
At the beginning of November a drake American wigeon was found at RSPB Cors Ddyga on Anglesey but was not seen the following day....
No comments:
Post a Comment