Beautiful morning

Kettleness fields

I love this thing Starlings do, groups leapfrogging to the front of the feeding flock, it creates a ripple of birds across the field. Must try and get a movie.

Anyone know what this might be? Tree fossil???

I overslept a jot. Well I'm in work mode now and the getting out for birding is hard. But I was at Kettleness by about 07:20 and sea watching by 07:45 It was probably a mistake to go seawatching as there was a bit of a drop and I was distracted on the way to the point by piles of Mepits and Linnets, there was a Whitethroat as well and something else that might have been a Skylark and might not.

Anyway I watched the sea for an hour but it was south-westerly, usually good for vismig and terns and not much else. The terns were all a bit shambolic, there weren't that many and they were indecisive about where they were going, well at least the Common Terns were - 12 east(ish), various swanning about and 1 west. 8 Sandwich Terns went east and 2 were hanging out. There were very few Gannets and most were adult, c 40. No Kittiwake. Auks mostly close in again the majority appeared to be Guillemots c100. 1 Fulmar went west. other westerly movers were a Bonxie and 5 Teal. Easterly there was an unclaimable Great Northern (fair way out, silhouette, and one of those not very angular ones) I'd be very surprised if it was a Black-throat but caution prevails; 2 Common Scoter and not much else. There were 6 Knot on the rocks along with the usual few Curlew and loads of Oiks. Common Gulls were 1 each way, Black-heads were a lot each way and sea mammals ran to just 3 Harbour Porpoise and a Grey Seal. that was that.

By the time I walked inland the mepits and Linnets had dispersed and there was little vismig to speak of. However, I did find a Wheatear, another Whitethroat, a smart Lesser Whitethroat and there were a few Chaffinch on the move with the occasional flock of 3 or 4 heading inland. Also 2 Siskin, about 30 Swallows and a small increase in Robins and Dunnocks or they were just making themselves more evident. Tree Sparrow 1. Time for Scaling Dam methought.