Summary September 2013

Summary September 2013

Garden

September continued in a largely pleasant way and there were even a few balmy days towards the end of the month. The Goldfinches have returned in good numbers and there are quite a few Tits around and a Dunnock is spotted occasionally. Still no Robin, though, and Blackbirds are still only occasionally. The weather has been good and there is probably a lot of food still available out in the woods and fields. Certainly there is a great abundance of berries this year. On the cat front we have bought another deterring device so we can arrange some crossfire. It remains to be seen if this is more efficient. We are due to lose our neighbour’s cat, however, as they more out for a while and rent their house to non cat owners !!!!

Birding Days Out

We did our best to try and get out this month – weather permitting – and there were some nice days. On 4th we went to Sandbach Flashes where we were fortunate to eventually get some reasonable views of a Stilt Sandpipier – a relatively rare visitor to Britain. On the 5th we continued our Sandpiper theme at RSPB Leighton Moss where, although we did not see any Marsh Harriers, we did get great views of Curlew Sandpipers, Greenshanks, Spotted Redshanks, Ruff and even a pair of Kingfishers !
On the 10th we went to WWT Martin Mere where we saw Marsh Harrier and a Peregrine and our first Pink-footed Geese of the year. We also had another chance to see some Curlew Sandpiper. We also dropped in on Mere Sands Woods but this was again a bit disappointing. On the 12th we went to Woolston Eyes where the main attraction was large numbers of Snipe. On the 26th we continued our Curlew Sandpiper theme and got further sightings of these birds at Burton Mere Wetlands and Inner Marsh Farm.

Birding Group

The new Birding Group Schedule has been worked out and we started a little later this year with the first day being a visit to Pennington Flash which was a little disappointing especially since we were really hoping to see the Lesser Scaup that was supposed to be off Ramsdale Ruck.