Natural Selection

I was in two minds whether to go out in the time between finishing work and the football tonight. This was not least because the tide wasn’t great for the sites I would normally go in a short gap, Skippool and Little Singleton. I went to the latter anyway, and was glad I did.

Greylags returning from moulting on Lake Windermere are regular as clockwork on the Wyre in early autumn. We know this as for many years birds with orange neck collars were among them. There hasn’t been much ringing of late and the birds dwindled away, the last goose standing is or was PZP, which outlived its partner PZS and was still around last year for a seventh season.

A relatively small number of new neck collars have been put on this year at Windermere. One of these birds was among the 165 birds at Little Singleton tonight – HVA. Below are a couple of pictures including the life history, which is rather brief as it was only ringed in June.

A group of 24 Black-tailed Godwits dropped in, the spangled juveniles looking particularly resplendent in the early evening sun. They didn’t hang around long before leaving to the south.

There were also a fair few small gulls on the shoulder of the Windy Harbour bend, and looking through these I eventually picked out a juvenile Mediterranean Gull. This is another species where the scalloped juveniles have an understated beauty.