From Great-Northerns to Goldcrests!

Today I cycled down to the pier to see what was around, I was hoping to improve on my great-northern diver photos but unfortunately the tide was too far out for any reasonable photos. This was a shame as the great-northerns look brilliant at the moment and most if not all of the birds are in their lovely summer plumage, With a high tide the birds can be close in and if you are very lucky you can hear their haunting call often heard in movies

You can hear it here at xeno-canto http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Gavia-immer

Summer plumage Great-northern divers, note the ruby coloured eye.

I had a look around the pier and its beach, there was very little around in terms of waders, 2 Oystercatchers, some bar-tailed godwits and a few whimbrel were all to be seen. The whimbrel passage seems to have dropped a fair bit with only a handful of birds to be seen.

Whimbrel with barwits from a few days ago.

I left the pier and was cycling home when I passed a cypress that was alive with bird calls. They sounded like goldcrests and when I checked it out through the binoculars I saw an adult goldcrest with, more interestingly 3 fledglings. The young birds were calling and were being fed by the parents. They were learning to fly and would clumsily fly over to a roof, bush or wall and land awkwardly. I saw one fly to a wall and cling on for a few minutes and got some photos of it, it then half flew and half fell to the ground at my feet and sat there for a while. It was too close to focus on and came to within an arms reach of me. Eventually it flew off into a tree and I left as it was starting to rain.