A tale of two birds

It has been a couple of months since I have added anything to my PBC (local) year list and an absolute age since adding a local lifer. That changed on Thursday with the addition of two birds, one the first for a couple of years and the other, a 'lifer'.

I decided to pay a morning visit to Maxey GP, my local patch which has been having problems of late with the water levels. The pump has been broken and the water has been rising and rising, flooding the area and leaving it only suitable for wildfowl. The pump had been mended and the water removed revealing lots of wader habitat, ideal for a juicy rarity or two. On arrival I noticed two waders fly from a nearby spit, one Dunlin sized, the other smaller. On setting up my scope I saw the two birds to be a juvenile Dunlin and a juvenile Little Stint, a year tick and the first in two years.

The Dunlin is on the left, the Little Stint on the right

And below, a little video of the two.

At lunchtime I received a call from Mike Weedon and a text from Brian Stone to tell me of a male Common Scoter at Ferry Meadows CP, a PBC lifer for me. I couldn't get there for a few hours and I hoped the bird would linger. I didn't have to worry as the bird was still present on my arrival, showing very well.

A small, black duck that is normally seen at the coast in large flocks, indeed I saw several at my last visit to north Norfolk, but this was the first time that I had seen one in my local area and a male to boot!

My year list now stands at a respectable 172, with my local PBC life list reaching 208.

Little Stint

The Little Stint is a tiny wader that is smaller than a House Sparrow.

The bird breeds in the Arctic where it nests on the ground in late June. The female can lay one clutch of eggs and leave their care to the male while she will incubate a second clutch. The young hatch quite quickly, after only 20 days and the young can fly at 17 days old.

It is a long distance migrant, leaving the Arctic in August. It moves on a broad front across land as far as possible and starts to moult on arrival at the Mediterranean. It will then fly to Africa where it overwinters. The bird is commonly seen in Britain, especially the juveniles (one of which is shown in the above photo`s) during the Autumn migration where it visits the edge of lakes and reservoirs and sheltered estuaries and brackish pools near the coast. It feeds by picking food from the surface or from water, rarely probing in mud. Its food consists of insects, small worms, tiny shellfish, shrimps and some plant material.