Saturday 28 December 2013

Purple patch

A spare couple of hours saw us head out for a bit of relaxing and, of course, some birding. Purple Sandpiper is a superb bird to watch clinging onto the rocks where the sea meets the land. With the tide in they do a bit of foraging around the rock pools.
Back inland to Killingworth Lake for more waterbirds...plenty of Coot...
...Jackdaws picking at the scraps...
...and a couple of Magpies playing in the park.
Pochard is a duck that is not that easy to find these days but there always a few on the lake.
Tufted Duck - well named.
The Moorhens are used to people wandering past so it's a good opportunity to get a close up shot.
There were a couple of Little Grebe resting beside the ducks...
...and a bit of a flap for good measure.
These bird are well fed so it was funny to see this one desperate to get a tasty morsel off the ground. The bird was ringed on 27th November 2013 as a juvenile - I doubt it will stray far.

2 comments:

Sonja said...

Looks like some great light, and a nice variety of birds.

Adelai said...

Brilliant close ups