A high tide and a clear dry, if blooming cold, forecast had us up and out at Ynys-hir to see what the rising water brought in. Not much, unfortunately. The usual
teal, wigeon, shelduck, pintail, curlew, redshank, goldeneye, snipe and
lapwing joined the honking great flocks of
canada geese in front of the saltings hide, and a handsome ringtail
hen harrier passed by to cheer us up, but aside from a nice group of
white fronted geese that flew in to alight on the water, it was fairly uneventful. Walking back through the reserve we stopped to listen to at least 3
great spots drumming away, and had great views of a foraging
treecreeper.
However, another quick scan of the estuary picked up this little oddball amongst the shelduck, some kind of hybrid ruddy shelduck? Certainly from the neck down its a ruddy, but the almost all black head throws up a number of potential suspects regarding the parentage.
Back home, things got even more exciting (hard to believe, I know) when we spotted a dark headed tit foraging by the ash tree - grabbing our bins for a good look, assuming it was a marsh tit and therefore a new bird on the garden list, we were astonished, and delighted to discover it was a
willow tit - garden tick number 70!
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