Another day sitting and watching on the Cumbrian coast in blustery winds and heavy drizzly rain, it hardly seemed to get light today. It was still an enjoyable day though, eight hours under my fishermans brolly worried that at any minute a gust might rip it from it's pegs and send it tumbling into the sea leaving me exposed to the elements. As I write the mist and rain is so bad that I can barely see Walney Island little more than a kilometre distant.
The birdings been good, the highlight was a great northern diver which
I watched as it tried to swallow a large fish. Later I
watched as it lowered it's head in an aggressive manner and swam towards a
small flock of wigeon, before diving and then emerging right in the middle of
the flock with its wings spread, flushing the wigeon in all directions. I've
never seen that before. Other highlights included a grey seal, my first here,
and a greenshank.
Great northern diver showing wigeon who's the boss. Not really sure why it
would behave in this way, wigeon are neither a threat or a competitor, and
even if they did eat fish, there's surely enough in the sea to go
round.
All of the photos in this post are phone scoped at a distance of about 750m on a dull misty day of heavy drizzle and moderate winds, so not surprising that they are not the best quality. However I still reckon that they are good enough to age this bird as an adult and therefore rule out the possibility that this is the juvenile great northern which was on Urswick tarn a week or so ago. The bird looks very well marked on the neck and has no sign of any scaling on the wings.
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