Wet weather passage

May 1 - I was at the lake by 9am having dropped the kids at school, but only had an hour.  It was a little misty and overcast with a bit of dampness in the air and felt like it could be a good day for some movement.  On arrival, 2 Shelduck flew over from the west and landed amongst quite a number already present, a quick count up got me to 10 birds, my largest count so far this year.  By the bench, a quick snippet of song from the nearby reeds alerted me to only my second Sedge Warbler of the Spring.  The regular Reed Warbler was still chuntering away in the spit reeds.  The rest of the spit was disappointingly lacking in waders, apart from a lone summer plumaged Dunlin.  My hour was soon up and I had to leave, a single Swift being the only other bird of note.

At around 11:30am I received a text from Mick McQ informing me that 5 Ringed Plover had just flown in.  5 minutes later, another text saying Black Tern.  Things were obviously moving, so 10 minutes later and I was back on site.  The Plovers and Black Tern were still present and I soon got onto an Arctic Tern.  Mick had to leave, so I was left alone to carry on the watch.  I decided to go to the viewpoint to try and grab some shots of the Plovers and whilst I was there, the Black Tern came in and landed as well - nice!  Whilst taking some records of the Black, I realised that the Arctic was standing next to it, so I grabbed some records of that.  I then found that there were 2 standing next to each other and shortly later there were 3 all standing together.  This seemed to be the number of Arctics, until Dave C arrived a while later.  Going through them again, I could see that there were now 4 birds.  They spent a lot of time perched up on the spit, with occasional sorties and it was nice to see them like this rather than in the usual flight mode.  I could even see that the Black Tern had a silver BTO type ring on its right leg, though obviously too far away to read anything on it.

At around 1:30pm a pair of Oystercatchers flew in, which were also new for the year.  They remained for a just over an hour before flying off west and were typically noisy whilst on the spit.  A couple more Swifts and that it was it for my viewing time.  Not a bad bit of passage, though I am still surprised that we haven't had Whimbrel yet and there were Barwits seen at several sites today.  North Bucks even had Sanderling and Turnstone at one site, so it could or should have been even better!

Oh it's worth mentioning that I saw my first brood of Egyptian Geese as well, 10 goslings - I wonder how many will make it to next week.

Arctic and 2 Ringed Plover

Black, 3 Arctics and Ringed Plover

Black, Common, 2 Arctics and Ringed Plover