Greenshank, Pennington Flash

Autumn continues apace at the flash with a cracking summer plumage greenshank a surprise find on the spit this morning. It's  a really well marked individual, especially on its scapulars.

So that's returning greenshank, common sandpipers and (probably) dunlin, plus a juvenile black-necked grebe, and we're not even out of June yet!

Juvenile black-necked grebe, Pennington Flash

A juvenile black-necked grebe was off the ruck today, associating closely with the female tufted duck with nasal saddle CH1. Juveniles often visit the flash in summer from nearby breeding sites, but this is the earliest I have ever seen here by 3 weeks. Also 2 common sandpipers and 3 common terns.

White rock-rose, Brean Down

White rock-rose Helianthemum apenninum, is a very rare member of the Helianthemum family, occurring in only a handful of localities in the whole of the UK. In fact apart from two or three coastal locations in south Devon, the only other place it occurs in the country is Brean Head in Somerset, just south of Weston-Super-Mare. I've always had a soft spot for the Helianthemum family because of the wonderful displays of common and hoary rock-rose in North Wales, particularly on the Great Orme, so since I was in Somerset today with a free afternoon, it seemed an opportunity too good to miss.

White rock-rose is said to flower from May to July but as we've just had a long period of warm sunny weather I suspected that it might be over a little early this year and so it proved. However, I was able to find a few flowers in amongst the carpets of seed heads. What a sight it must have been when it was in full flower!

White-spotted bluethroat, Slimbridge

In recent weeks a singing male white-spotted bluethroat has returned for its third summer to Slimbridge WWT. It's often been elusive, showing very infrequently, bringing to mind the Martin Mere bird from 10 years ago which could go missing for several hours at a time and then show for a few seconds. However, in the past week it's habits have changed for some reason and it's become a bit easier to see, so I decided that today was the day to call in for a look, having driven past it on several occasions so far this year. A strong supporting cast also made the visit very appealing.

The bluethroat was at Middle Point which is only accessible via the Summer walkway footpath and this was the first time I had been out on the estuary at Slimbridge. The bird showed well about four times in the 90 minutes or so that I was there at a distance of about 80m. It was a decent view through the scope and I could clearly hear it singing with it's tail cocked as it sang. This is only the second white-spotted bluethroat I have seen in the UK, the last was at Martin Mere and was also singing, almost exactly 10 years ago to the day.

It's been a great year for black-winged stilts in the UK with several pairs breeding at a number of sites including at least one pair in Yorkshire, but this is an unpaired single bird. I even found two on the spit at Pennington Flash two weeks ago, but there's no habitat there for them to breed.

Now it is autumn

Now I can truly say that autumn has arrived at Pennington Flash, with four common sandpipers on the spit.

A migrant at the Flash but is it spring or autumn?

This morning there was a really smart looking summer plumage dunlin on the end of the spit. It was a very bright bird with a grey head and nape contrasting with the rufous mantle, leading me to believe that it might be a male of the northern race alpina which would probably mean that it's a late spring migrant heading north. On the other hand it could be a failed breeder of the more usual UK race schinzii heading south which would make it the first passage wader of the autumn at the flash. Not sure what happened to summer....

Thanks to a tip off from a friend I was ready and waiting for this great white egret to fly over the ruck.

There are plenty of juvenile black-headed gulls around the spit at the moment, which is good to see given the amount of corpses lying around which died from bird flu.

White-letter hairstreak, St Helens

White-letter hairstreak occur rarely in St Helens largely due to the rarity of the host tree, elm. However they can be found in a few places and today I called in at one of the sites and counted at least six flying around the tops of the trees and for some reason occasionally landing on a hawthorn bush. Due to them usually staying high, they're difficult enough to see let alone photograph, and this picture is a phone scoped video grab.

Black guillemot, Hilbre Island

I didn't realise that oystercatchers were such shrinking violets, I always considered them quite noisy and bold, even aggressive, but today on Hilbre I watched a goose stepping, diminutive, black guillemot terrorise a whole flock of them! 

The bird has for some reason attached itself to the oystercatcher flock and is not shy of asserting itself. When they are on the rocks it roosts with them and flies with them like they are the best of pals, but if it needs to move because of the approaching tide or some other disturbance, it scatters its new friends in all directions by walking towards them, chest puffed out, head held low and flapping it's wings at them to reveal the white under wing and white upper wing patches. It's a bizarre thing to watch. Apparently the last long staying bird, which was around 30 years ago, behaved in a similar way.

Their diets are obviously very different, oystercatchers remove molluscs from their shells, black guillemots dive in the sea for fish, so it must go off by itself at times, but not once today did I see it fishing. It seems healthy enough though, in full breeding plumage with slightly pale primary feathers which seem to indicate that it's a 2nd summer bird and not a full adult. 

Black guillemots are an almost annual visitor to Hilbre but usually they are just fly pasts so difficult to connect with. The nearest breeding that I know of is on the Great Orme which is around 40km west as the black guillemot flies. This was a Merseyside tick for me bringing my total to 280 species. 

A pair of avocets, Pennington Flash

A brief mid-afternoon visit in sweltering heat produced a pair of avocets on the end of the spit today. It's amazing to think that these days avocets barely raise an eyebrow amongst birders, yet this is still only my third record of the species at the flash and they are the latest in an ever increasing list of impressive birds at the site this month. So far in June we've had serin (not seen by me), black-winged stilts, avocets, great white egret, black tern, red kite and Mediterranean Gulls. What next?

Covering the cock-up

Yesterday morning I was walking along the main footpath just before Horrock's hide when a white egret flew over just above tree height. My initial reaction was "Oh there's the little egret that has been hanging around recently".

There's not a lot of sky visible here and I had about 2 seconds or less to react, raise my binoculars and have a look at the egret before it disappeared behind the trees. Just about the only thing I had time to notice was that the bird had an orangey / yellow bill and dark feet. Then it was gone. Probably because I had been expecting it to be the little egret I apparently misjudged the size and identified it as a cattle egret. It sounds ridiculous now, but that's the way it is.

Then this morning Bill and Barry had a great white egret on the spit....🤦🤷‍♂️

With the benefit of hindsight, from the picture I have in my mind of the orangey / yellow bill yesterday, it was clearly a great white egret and not a cattle egret. The bill was too long.

Oh well, onwards and upwards.

Also this morning a (grey) cuckoo flew from the south side and over Horrock's hide. It seems likely that cuckoos have actually bred at the flash this year and not just passed through. I can't say that todays bird was definitely a male, but it was obviously a different bird to that seen two days ago which was for sure a rufous female. There's been a male singing on and off for a week or two which doesn't seem to be in any great rush to leave  and this could be it. Given that it's now mid-June and adult cuckoos usually leave the country early after egg laying, it seems possible that they are here to stay for the summer.

Rufous female cuckoo and a thunderstorm

I called in briefly at the flash this afternoon on my way to do the weekly shop and saw first a rufous female cuckoo fly over Horrock's followed by a little egret.

Mediterranean gulls, Pennington Flash

I decided to walk along the canal this morning from the Common Lane footbridge towards the by-pass. Lots of red-eyed damselflies on the lilypads and suddenly I became aware of a "cow, cow, cow" call from overhead and looking up I saw a couple of Mediterranean gulls hawking for insects above me with a few black-headed gulls. I took a couple of photos before they disappeared and one of the birds is clearly a second summer, almost identical to the adult with a full black hood, but also with a few black markings on the tips of the primaries. Later they were both on the spit with a common sandpiper. A barnacle goose flew along the canal with a couple of greylags and four common terns were on the flash. 

Black-winged stilts, Pennington Flash

Wow! What a morning! I had a late night last night due to visiting a local nightjar and long-eared owl site so I decided that especially given the time of year, I might as well have a lie in bed this morning, because as I said yesterday, there's not much happening at this time of year....

I woke up at 7am, made a cup of tea, pottered around for a bit, had some breakfast and then thought, "you know what, I may as well go for a quick look at the flash, because you never know, today might be the day".... and it was! 

I couldn't stay long, it was just a quick look, and after half an hour I'd packed up and was heading back to the car with just a redshank and a single common tern to show for my efforts. I was almost at the car when suddenly I saw two gangly black and white birds flying towards me very low over the water, less than a metre above the water I'd say. I'm sure that they were going to land on the car park foreshore but then at the last minute they saw me and turned and flew along the shoreline towards the spit, at this point less than 10m from me. Boom, two black-winged stilts, no mistaking them!

I legged it back to Horrock's and sure enough they had landed about half way down the spit. I just had time to fire off the photos in this post before they flew again, away from me along the spit and then turned as if going into Ramsdales and out of view for me. Despite searching for the next 45 minutes I was unable to relocate them anywhere, but then I got a call from Ian who had seen them from Horrock's near the gull island. Unfortunately by the time I got back to Horrock's they had flown again and this time disappeared for good.

There's virtually no habitat for black-winged stilts at the flash, but I have been half expecting them because there has been an influx this spring with a few birds moving around the north west. They were always going to be more or less in and out jobs though, there's nothing to keep them at Pennington Flash. 

So yeah, as I said yesterday, not much happening at this time of year. 

Cuckoo and demoiselles at the flash

Banded demoiselles are on the wing at the moment, at Pennington Flash I see them either on Hey Brook or Westleigh Brook and perhaps they are also on Pennington Brook but I don't usually go that way to find out. 

It's that time of year when I don't usually expect to see much at the flash and this kind of weather is especially grim. Hot sunny weekends with low water levels means that the flash is heaving with people and dogs, some of whom apparently can't read or don't care and just head off down the spit for reasons best known to themselves, flushing everything in the nature reserve. On the water we have yachts and organised open water swimmers and later on in the day they'll be joined by inflatables and more casual swimmers, the latter all setting off from the car park despite the signs saying don't do it and all apparently unconcerned by toxic blue green algae in the water. Oh well fingers crossed folks.....

Cheddar Pink in Cheddar Gorge

Today I finally achieved one of my life long ambitions and saw Cheddar Pink growing in it's classic location, Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. In the UK this plant occurs only in Somerset with Cheddar Gorge far and away the main site, but it does also occur elsewhere in Europe I believe, especially in the Alps. Just like all pinks, it has a wonderful scent. From what I have read, whilst still common here, it has declined considerably since it was first discovered in the early part of the 18th century, in part due to scrub encroachment and people picking the flowers. 

I first learned of the plant and the gorge from my dad when I was a lad, though he never visited the place and so didn't see the plant in the wild, yet seeing it today feels like a link to the past and I can feel the connection with my dad again. It's taken me so long to see it because like my dad, my main interest when it comes to botany is alpine plants, so my natural inclination is to head north to Cumbria, Teesdale, Yorkshire and Scotland or west into Wales. Somerset is a county that I have only visited on a handful of occasions and in those instances usually to one of the counties wonderful bird reserves and not necessarily at the right time of year for the pink and certainly not with likeminded travelling companions who would be prepared to climb to the top of the gorge and spend half a day botanising. However, just at the moment I am working in Somerset and with my surveys finishing at 11am latest everyday, I have plenty of free time and ample opportunity to call in.

There are lots of other great plants here as well, including Cheddar hawkweed Hieracium stenolepiforme, an even rarer plant that occurs nowhere else in the world. I believe that the last survey found that it had declined with just 50+ plants left. The plant in the photo above was growing on the cliff near Sows Hole down at the bottom of the gorge. Hawkweeds are notoriously difficult, but in this instance the identification has been confirmed by the Somerset Rare Plant Group (opens in a new window). Key features are the the toothed leaves, obvious particularly on the back leaves in the photo, the lack of leaves on the stem and the simple hairs on the bracts. Plus the location of course, with Sows Hole one of the known locations of the species within the gorge.

CH1 still hanging around

It took me six years to see tufted duck CH1 at Pennington Flash but just at the moment I can't seem to escape her. Originally ringed in France in 2017 and first seen at the flash six weeks later, she's been back and to between France and the flash ever since. At the moment I see her on almost every visit and it doesn't seem like she's got any plans to go to France this summer.

Also today, a single ringed plover on the spit, most likely a new bird as the two from yesterday morning were not seen in the afternoon.

Passage continues at the flash

A week ago it seemed that migration had all but stopped at the flash, but the past few days have proven that it's still on-going, with a mass influx of black terns and a few waders such as greenshank, turnstone, dunlin and today a couple of ringed plovers. When I first arrived this morning at 05:45 there was just the one, but then it flew up very high and I thought it was leaving until suddenly mid-flight it was joined by a second bird and the two dropped down again onto the spit. I've no idea where the second bird came from, but looking at the photos it would appear that they are male and female. Perhaps new love was found in a chance encounter high above the flash!

Also today, a single black tern was still present, and a feature of the past few days has been the masses of swift over the boat club, with at least 500 birds today.

Red kite, black terns and a turnstone at the flash

I find it slightly ironic that as this morning progressed and I reported black terns and turnstone at Pennington Flash, a real flash mega went completely unreported by the bird services. I was at the boat club and heard a commotion overhead and looking up saw a magnificent red kite quite low down. It slowly circled higher and higher and eventually drifted off north.

This was my second red kite at the flash, the first was almost six years ago to the day in 2017, yet I don't know of any other birders who have seen the species here. 

Marsh Warbler, Chapel Six Marshes

Marsh warbler is one of those birds, Savi's is another, that I've really not seen that many of. It's hard to know why really, but I guess that I saw the species quite early in my birding life and since then I've just not bothered with them. Living in north west England I'm very unlikely to come across one in the course of general birding and I'm never inclined to twitch them because they can often be very elusive. 

However today I'm in Lincoln in between two dusk breeding bird surveys so had ample opportunity during the day to call in at nearby Chapel Six Marshes to see a singing marsh warbler that was found early morning. I'm so glad that I did make the effort because this was a very special bird. It was singing on top of a bush as close as 3m from the path and at one point was creeping in the reeds less than a metre from me!

It has absolutely everything, the song, the orange gape, the lemony coloured underparts, shortish bill, rounded head, pale legs, I even had a good look at the tertials and primaries, though I'm not really sure what I'm looking for here! Well I do know, but such detail is never clear cut to me. 

Anyway, quite aside from the identification features, it was a cracking little bird and a pleasure to watch and listen to.