Oops, made a mistake - but results in a year tick!

Right, this afternoon I checked Passage House, but I’ll get onto that bit later. I expect you’ll remember that strange bird song which everyone thought was a Blackcap, and that I 'confirmed' was indeed a Blackcap. Well, I expect you may be able to see where this one’s going!

Pretty much whenever I walk past the same spot, I hear it singing. Well this afternoon I saw it properly, and I was very surprised to see that it was a Lesser Whitethroat! I swear it looked like a Blackcap when I, ‘confirmed’ its identity. All I can say that it was a split second view and that they are both Sylvia ;) Or I might have looked at the wrong bird!

I didn’t have my camera with me at the time so I had to go back to the house to get it. It wasn’t really worth it because this is the best I could do.

You can just make out the white collar that extends half way up the neck and the black alula.

It’s an absolute devil of a bird to see. It sings from deep within bramble bushes! I’ll try again some other day. It was also doing some really weird song which was different from before. If anyone else wants to try and see it, put this into Google maps > 50.534121,-3.592348

On to the estuary:

Mute Swan lime green NY9 was still present with 20 others. There were two Dunlin with nice black tummies feeding amongst the gulls, a total of 28 Shelduck including 7 ducklings, and two Great Crested Grebes.