Thursday 13 September 2007

Venus Pool - Pec 'n Arctic Tern around

A 'well chuffed' Jason Buckley found and got the news out of a Pectoral Sandpiper at VP and whilst this is more 'record' imagery - a great Shropshire find and tick no 149 for my 2007 County list (just one more to go!!) The poor Kingfishers got ignored as there was also a juvenile Tern busy fishing over the pool. This was undoubtedly an Arctic, the small legs, short all black bill and pale carpal bar all pointing in this direction. Sadly, neither bird stopped for long and both were gone by the evening......













The day ended with a mercy mission involving TWO swans, clearly distressed and having to be rescued (if only from the fiercely territorial local pair!) then taken to a local wildlife hospital. I must confess to being somewhat relieved at not having to handle a swan in the hand, the biggest hazard seemed to come from the copious amount of feather fleas however! (No swans were harmed during the filming of these shots - Martin is a qualified ringer!)