Summertime on the Local Patches

June, July and August were mostly quiet. The local sea-watching point was again the destination of choice on 1st June. Suffice to say, I spotted three very distant, high-up Pomarine Skuas but nothing else at all. I didn’t do much birding in the rest of June, and it wasn’t in fact until the end of July that I managed to get out again. A brief visit to the local mudflats on 25th July produced a lovely adult Mediterranean Gull, an unusual sight round here. And what a stunning individual this was – the black, white and red standing out against the diffuse grey surround. Gorgeous! The following day, the 26th, was spent at the local RSPB Reserve, and amongst the usual birds, I was thrilled to find a couple of Avocet, fairly uncommon around here. There was nothing of great excitement on the main reserve, just a few juvenile Stonechats and a bunch of common stuff, but things tended to pose nicely, and I enjoyed a few hours taking shots of the most photogenic ones. I was keen to try my hand at Swallows hunting over the water; tricky at the best of times, but I had some success in the end. My final few days in July (27th-28th) were spent slightly further afield where my primary objective was Greenshank. Other species I photographed included Dunlin and Little Egret, and I got some decent flock shots of the former. The Greenshank, however, were the focus of my attention and became something of an obsession, not least because they kept flying off just as I was about to take the shot! Eventually, lying flat on the ground and edging commando-style towards the end of the bank, I succeed in catching them perched just before the inevitable. Flighty little rascals! Lovely birds, though.