This stunning red-necked grebe was the headliner in a spectacular week at Pennington Flash. The bird was found yesterday evening at about 6:45pm and remained throughout today. I nipped out yesterday and saw the bird in half light from the ruck but returned the today for better views and spent most of the day watching it. At no time did I see the bird dive and the only feeding actions I saw involved flycatching and surface feeding, which is actually not surprising since BWP says that the species eats mainly invertebrates, especially aquatic and terrestrial insects and their larvae, and to a lesser extent fish. This image and the video below were taken from Mossley Hall farm when the bird made a rare excursion into west bay for a sleep.
The grebe also raised it's feathers when a female goldeneye came close, which I believe is threat display, which apparently occurs during halts on migration as well as in breeding area, by both sexes but especially males.
Prior to the red-necked grebe being found it seemed that the headlines would belong to a flock of 30 whooper swans that dropped into Ramesdales bay at mid-morning yesterday.
The flock was "herded" by a couple of resident mute swans which were non
to pleased with the new arrivals.
Amazingly the birds were still present in Ramsdales this morning and they
remained until early evening when they flew north.
No comments:
Post a Comment