LRP and Bee-eater!

Late this afternoon I received a text from Kev saying that a Bee-eater had been seen flying over the Penn Inn roundabout towards Buckland! I was in the car coming back from Torquay, so I got dropped off and walked to Passage House taking in the racecourse on my way (I had planned to do this anyway because Kev had found a Little Ringed Plover earlier in the day). After walking through the tunnel under the railway, I had perhaps a greater surprise than the news of the Bee-eater; a Guillemot was sitting on the river within a few metres of me! I've never seen one west of Shaldon Bridge let alone this far up the river. I wonder what was going through it's mind!

Swimming down the channel.

I phoned Kev about it, who was already at Netherton looking for the Bee-eater, and he was able to quickly drive down to Aller Brook bridge (see photo above) and connect with his 150th bird for Passage House!

On to Passage House, I quickly picked up the Little Ringed Plover on the spit, along with two Common Sandpipers.

Such a cool looking eye ring!!

Then I quickly started scanning the farmland south of the estuary for a flash of blue in the trees, but, like Kev who had gone back to searching the same area, didn't have any success. We did both however see the first House Martin of the year. Pretty scant reward for missing a Bee-eater though!