Green Back

My first green sandpiper of the post-breeding season was bang on cue this evening with a single bird at the Wildfowlers' Pools.
We usually see a few passing through from early July onward and numbers can reach double figures in exceptional years. Of course there's also the chance of the odd wood sandpiper dropping in too; we generally get on one every other year or so.
Other notable stuff from my latish sojourn included a couple of noisy water rails in Reedy Corner (have they bred here this year?), both reed and sedge warblers singing and a little ringed plover. Although I still haven't seen any young plovers so far this year, there's still a chance that there may be a late brood, as there was last year.
At Freeman's Pools the 2 young little grebes continue to grow but other than a few mallard duckling and Canada goose goslings there's been little in the way of successful nesting. The tufted ducks failed to produce anything, no mute swans have nested for the first time in decades and even the lowly moorhen seems to have had a pretty poor time of it. That said, a recently hatched clutch was at Bank Pool while the coots on Frog Pond still had one decent sized nipper with them.

Earlier in the day I had dropped into Leighton Moss briefly and had cracking views of osprey - I've been seeing them almost daily since starting my new job there but I never fail to be chuffed by the sight of these ace birds. At one point, a male marsh harrier and the osprey were in my field of vision at the same time - an almost unimaginable sight when I used to go there as a lad...

Jon