Gareth James Blog: 13th July 2020

Three hours (07:30 - 10:30) at Church Norton failed to produce yesterday's Roseate Tern though ca.60 Little Terns, ca.45 Dunlin, two Whimbrel and a Common Sandpiper offered some compensation. We then headed round to the North Wall (where there were 80 Black-tailed Godwits and a Common Sandpiper on the Breech Pool) and walked from there to the harbour mouth and back seeing four Yellow-legged Gulls (a sleeping adult and three juvs), three Cattle Egrets (that landed in the harbour with some loafing gulls), two Greenshank and another Whimbrel.

At this point Dad was keen to head home but fortuitously I persuaded him that a return visit to Church Norton would be a good idea. Luckily we got the last space in the car park from where we made our way down to the harbour for another look through the terns. Almost immediately I picked out a pristine Roseate Tern on the mudflats which gave good scope views before taking off and landing out of view inside the fencing on Tern Island. It did not stay there long and soon returned to the mudflats where it suddenly dawned on us that there were two birds standing side by side, one of which had a metal ring on the right leg. Both showed nicely before one flew strongly out to sea and was lost from view. Incredibly we then found a third colour ringed bird (without the rosy underparts of the other birds) which annoyingly took off before we could determine the colour ring combination and headed off out to sea.

With other birders arriving, it was a relief that there was still one bird present which after a while got up and flew around before joining a second bird on the mudflats. We definitely saw three birds (one unringed, one with a metal ring & one with colour rings) but conceivably there may have been four different birds present between given that there were two still showing when we left and two that had previously flown out to sea!