Rixton and points west

Juvenile Little Ringed Plover, Houghton Green Flash

Juvenile Common Tern at Moat Lane pools flattening itself against the island

Adult Common Tern, Moat Lane pools, Rixton

Juvenile Pied Wagtail, Pennington Flash

Juvenile Little Owl, Croft

Juvenile Grey Heron in the sunset at HGF

The water level at HGF. Normally the water's edge is at the back of the reed mace in the top left hand corner!

Common Blue Damselfly, Rixton

Six-spot Burnet, Rixton

Four-spotted Chaser, Rixton

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More catch up. Last Wednesday I paid an evening visit to Rixton to check on the terns. Upon arriving at pool 2 I discovered 2 teenagers swimming in the pool and generally moving towards the island the tern chicks were located on. I could see both chicks flattening themselves against the slope of the island, trying to be invisible. I now had a dilemma – do I shift the kids off knowing they are likely to either tell me to f*** off or come back as soon as I leave (and wonder why they had been told to go) or do I ignore them and hope they don’t disturb the chicks. I chose the latter option. One of the kids went onto the terns island and came within 10 feet of one chick before turning around – fortunately he didn’t see it. They eventually left and all was well again. Nothing much else – an Oystercatcher flew over pool 1 and I spent a while chasing damselflies, moths and dragonflies (four-spotted chasers) down the ditch along the front of the pools.
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At HGF a relatively rare sighting was a Great Spotted Woodpecker while a Little Ringed Plover was scuttling around the shoreline. The Coot’s had increased to 19 birds and around 80-90 sheps were congregating on the wires by Midhops. The following day the Coot numbers had increased to 21 (heady days!) and a juvenile Grey Heron was also around – this one seems to be present most days and still had tufts of down sticking out of its head! I had visited here near dusk and was really chuffed to see a family of Little Ringed Plovers drop in – an adult and 2 juveniles were there. One of the juveniles started walking towards me before mum uttered an alarm call and off it went whizzing away over the water!
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Thursday night I briefly popped into Pennington looking for the Black Tern. Typically it had gone though I did have plenty of opportunities to go and see it and didn’t bother. It was nice to bump into Jeff and have a bit of a chit chat. The Lesser Whitethroat was still rattling away near Horrocks Hide while three Common Terns eventually dropped in and over the back were 2 Buzzards and a Sparrowhawk. On Friday we went to the van early – I seemed to sleep all day and din’t do any birding.