more waxwings (?) Exmouth

c30/40+ waxwing over house at 1120am (Belle Vue Road). Sizeable flock flew west towards train and bus station? Will try and track them down. Also as I'm sure is the case everywhere, hundreds of thrushes on the move plus skylark, meadow pipit and lapwing this morning.

Roosting Wrens etc.

For those not aware the BTO is currently running a survey on this behaviour:

www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/gbw/about/background/projects/roosting-survey

Haldon Forest - Sunday 19/12

Here a couple of video grabs of roosting Wrens this evening at Underdown, Haldon Forest. also some info as well.

Last night I researched communal winter roosting behaviour of Wrens: Birds may travel as far as 2km to established roost site. Resident male bird may be on the door only letting females and few persistent males in. 96 birds recorded in one roost. Roost sites are well insulated passerine nests (house martin nests are popular), nest boxes, holes in trees, walls and under roofs. The birds leave the roost about half a hour before sunrise. Sunrise was at 8.22am this morning and sure enough at 7.50am they all started to pile out, I counted 29 leaving, don't know what happened to the other 5! About 30 birds roosted again tonight.

[from John Gale]

Bideford Bridge - Sunday 19/12

8x Knot (unusual) at side of Bridge on mudbank struggling to break into muddy banks for any food.

[from Shaun Barnes]

Topsham - Saturday 18/12

The starling roost in the Exe reed beds is largest I have seen for many years with birds streaming in from all directions for about 45 minutes. A steady movement of Skylarks and Redwing over head all day. 14 Reed bunting and 8 Brambling in the garden. There have been very few ducks on the Exe around the reed beds during this cold period. Today only 1 Goldeneye, 8 Teal and a few Mallard.

[from Martin Elcoate]

Prawle today

More snow's a-coming !!

Slithered and bumped my way down to Prawle today (well the WeBS count had to be done, didn't it!). Started with a seawatch though, which was fairly productive. Single Great Northern and Black-throated Divers (seemed to be heading towards the Kingsbridge Estuary), four Red-throated Divers east, Balearic Shearwater east, (and presumed to be the same bird later flying back west), 4 Fulmars, 573 Gannets (most east), 13 Common Scoters, two Red-breasted Mergansers, (pair), drake Teal, 17 Kittiwakes and 247 Auks. (Most of these were close enough to identify, and all but 6 were Guillemots).

WeBS count was quite good for Prawle, returning totals of 2 Wigeon, 77 Oystercatcher, 3 Curlew, 6 Redshank, (the highest count here since 2004), 3 Knot, 2 Sanderling, Grey Plover, 10 Purple Sandpiper and 15 Turnstone.

A lot of birds were finding plenty of food in the snow- and frost-free lower fields, including 470+ Golden Plover, 45 Lapwing, 200+ Skylark, 70 Song Thrush, 12 Redwing, and single Mistle Thrush and Fieldfare.

Other counts today included 5 Med Gulls, 16 Common Gulls (a good site count), 26 Snipe, (including a flock of 10 east during the seawatch), 2 Woodcock, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Black Redstart (wintering female on the Point), and a single Goldcrest.

Barnstaple Garden

Iced-in today but plenty of stuff visiting the garden including Song Thrush, Redwing and Fieldfare.
I took this shot from the comfort of my computer room through a double glazed widow.

Fremington Pill & Fremington Quay-Barnstaple WeBS

Goosander 2 readheads (Anchor Wood Bank)
Wigeon 68
Ruff 1 (Anchor Wood Bank)
Redshank 88
Snipe 21
Curlew 113
Dunlin 691
Lapwing 696 (with many more towards the opposite bank and beyond my mid-channel cut-off point)
Black-tailed Godwit 3 (Fremington Pill)
Bar-tailed Godwit 1
Oystercatcher 58
Grey Plover 5
Greenshank 2
Sanderling 11
Ringed Plover 7

Wembury 19/12 - PM

An early afternoon walk along the snowy beach produced some goodies: Moorhen, Eider (female off outflow pipe), 60 Golden Plover, 50 Lapwing, 2 Common Gull, 3 LBBG, Mistle Thrush and plenty of Song thrush. Wembury finally got its share of the Lapland Bunting action with one with a group of ~50 Skylarks in the big stubble field W of the car park.

Bideford - yesterday 18th December

Just a Bideford update. Saturday 18.12.2010  3x Chiffchaff, one with a Ring on, 4x Long-tailed tits, all in carpark area of High St Methodist church Bideford, and 11x Canada Geese fly by. 1x Brambling with very large flock of Chaffinches at Eastridge, and large amonts of Golfinches. No sign of Waxwing anymore

[from Shaun Barnes]

Braunton Rad, Barnstaple

This morning saw 1 Brambling and 5 Redwings in my garden on the Braunton Road. That makes 48 species in 22 years! I`ve also been visited by a male Reed Bunting everyday this week, feeding on the ground below bird tables.

Thurlestone Marsh

Still 95% frozen. Around lunchtime - 25+ Snipe feeding with 15 Wigeon . No major cold weather movement until 15. 20 when a flock of 120+ Snipe flew over the marsh and up the valley.

Read Buntings in my garden now7 , 1 Chiffchaff plus 5 Redwing

Exmouth

12 waxwing present 0815 feeding on rowan berries right outside the entrance to the leisure centre. Only 5 present on a very brief visit at 1440.
Blackhill Quarry - mostly iced over but c6/700+ teal present, 22+ tufted duck, 2/3 mediterranean gull, 1 adult yellow-legged gull (or possibly hybrid?), c30+ common gull, c200+ herring gull, c6/700+ black-headedgull, c15+skylark and c40+fieldfare.

Exminster Marshes

The marshes looked bleak and deserted this morning. Most of the water is frozen including, for the first time this winter, the main ditch that flows through the fields. There were small flocks of Black-tailed Godwits flying over with the largest flock (60 birds) feeding close to the village. A group of 20 Lapwing huddled on the ground, partially covered by snow, with another 19 flying overhead. A Kestrel, Sparrowhawk and Buzzard sat in trees. In the middle of one field a Cettis Warbler foraged in a tall clump of grass. On the canal the coots and ducks have opened up two holes in the ice having depleted the weed in the original hole. Here there were at least 50 Gadwall, 7 Pochard, 11 Tufted Duck and about 300 Coot.

In my garden, in the village, the number of Bramblings continues to climb with at least 8 males and several females. A Mistle Thrush was a surprise and yesterday a Blackcap (female) was feeding near the Royal Oak pub as a flock of about 200 Skylarks flew over.

Kingsbridge Estuary

Charleton Marsh / Bay (14:15-16:30, high tide ).

Only 2 Chiffchaffs seen in the sewage works with the usual Grey Wagtail but also a Coal Tit, 3 or 4 Goldcrests and a noticeable increase in Blackbird numbers.
Out in the bay were 2 Shoveler, 7 Tufted Ducks, 9 Goldeneye, 26 Red-breasted Mergansers and the wintering Whimbrel. A small male Peregrine did a rapier lap of the marsh and bay catching nothing.
On the marsh were c 200 Teal, 58 Wigeon, Pintail, Shoveler and 40+ Snipe, the latter from where they were obviously recent cold weather arrivals. The wildfowl emptied out of the marsh as it started getting late, no obvious disturbance but they may have been psycich. All manic twitchers, over-eager photographers, space invaders and crooked politicians welcomed here in preference to the five shooters who turned up, marched straight to the scrapes to put the dogs around the reed fringes, maybe for snipe. I am not anti-shooting but i thought this was out of order given the present weather.

Otter Estuary

A walk around the Otter today produced the following highlights:

39 Curlew, 5 Black-tailed Godwit, 1 Grey Plover, 1 Bar-tailed Godwit, 8+ Redshank, 3+ Ringed Plover, 28 Oysercatcher & 3 Turnstone (on the beach), 1 Shoveler, 2 Tufted duck, 1 Eider (on the sea), 1 ad Med. Gull and 2 Cetti's Warbler. No sign of the Glossy Ibis after a brief look in its favoured field.

Haldon Forest etc.

Red Kite flew north west over Underdown, Haldon Forrest at midday, 30 Bramblings feeding in garden last 2 weeks

This evening I counted at least 34 wrens going to roost in our house martin nest outside our bathroom window. Another 15 or so appeared not to be able to fit in and went to next doors house martins nest. Some of these birds looked faily weak and one or two fluttered to the ground on not being able to get into the nest, they did fly back up okay. I'll have to turn the central heating up tonight!

[from John Gale]

Plymouth.

A look on the Plym late afternoon turned up a female Goldeneye, probably last weeks bird, and a female R.B. Merganser. Six Teal are a good count here and the pair of Gadwall are still in residence. Not much else around apart from ten Little Grebes, five Greenshank, one Snipe and a couple of Common Sands.
At home twenty or so Redwing passed over the house with a couple coming into the garden.

Broadsands

Flock of 800-1000 Skylark in field behind beach with more smaller flocks passing over. 8+Reed Bunting and 17+Cirl Buntings. On beach 1 Shelduck and 1 Redshank (both not normal here). Lots of Redwing passing over and in gardens on the walk to the beach.

Powderham Marshes

Nothing spectacular but just some of the large flocks working hard for a living!