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Tuesday 6 December 2011

Broadsands

Good to meet another blogger Rob Macklin on the headland this morning between us we managed to see:
1 Red-necked Grebe, 56 Great Crested Grebes, 8 Black-necked Grebes, 2 Red-throated Divers (no Great Northerns today!), 3 Common Scoter, hundreds of Kits, auks other Gulls and Gannets out in Torbay.

Around the car park: 13 Cirl buntings on seed in 2nd car park, 2 Reed Bunting, 2 collybita type Chiffchaffs and the tristis type (odd calling) Chiffchaff, 2 Goldcrests.

At Preston: 2 Black-necked Grebes.

Two of the Chiffchaffs present the olive looking collybita type left and odd calling browny-grey tristis type right. In bright - neutral light today there appear to be some olive streaks in the mantle and possibly nape of the tristis type bird - olive in the other parts of wings/tail and rump are not so important. In the field a little yellow on the undertail coverts; combined with the odd call (despite it responding only to tristis song playback) must make this bird an intergrade or just a bird from the eastern contact zone between abietinus/tristis?