Tuesday 15th December

This morning, the Sparrowhawk visited again, but I am sorry to say that today, it had success in taking a chaffinch off the bird table, all the other wee birds flew off but the chaffinch thought it was safe staying inside the cage, but not so... Mary today carried the WeBS count on the floods, with the highlight being a juv WTSE spooking around 50 Mallard. Earlier on, the same bird had been spooking the geese down below the Visitor centre! Mary also had a Kestrel near to Gruinart Farm with a Peregrine seen over the salt marsh. Mary's tally for her count was 112 Wigeon, 186 Mallard, 226 Teal, 1 Green winged Teal (south hide), 1 Goldeneye, 3 R B Merganser, 6 Curlew, 11 Mute, 10 Whoopers, 66 Pintail, 1 Dabchick, 2 Heron, 17 Shoveler, 3 Lapwing and 39 Greylag. Mary was saying that someone had written last week in the diary about the American Wigeon being seen by the North hide, but she had no joy in spotting it today!