Saturday 11th January 2014

Black Guillemot

Black Guillemot

   A return trip to Brixham Harbour today, as the sun was out, to see if i could improve on some of the photos i had? Sadly when we arrived we were told that the rarer birds had disappeared!! The White-billed Diver had been seen yesterday off Berry Head, but this would be more distant than last time, the juvenile Iceland Gull, had been seen in the morning, then flew out to sea!!! But, just about the first bird we saw was, as it turns out, the one i wanted to photograph, Black Guillemot. It stayed just out of decent range, but i did get some shots, which is more than i have done before, with a Winter/1st Winter plumaged bird.

Purple Sandpiper

Razorbill

   Actually in the harbour, there were a couple of Common Guillemots, and a Black-throated Diver. So a lot less than last time, probably because of the slightly more settled weather we have had, not the really windy stuff anyway!!!!! The other side of the Breakwater (the sea side), there were again a lot of Great Northern Divers, probably 10+, Black-throated Divers, Common Guillemot, 2 Razorbills, a Slavonian Grebe and on the Breakwater itself Turnstones, Rock Pipits and Purple Sandpipers. The latter i had counted 19 of, on the jetty at the end, but there were more on the Breakwater too, so 20+ were there.

Siberian Chiffchaff

  A quick visit to Broadsands, found us surrounded by people and dogs!!!! Not a lot of birds gonna be close today there then? In the bay i did see 2 Great Northern Divers, but couldn't find any Grebes, which is unusual there! A look in the closed car park produced 6+ Cirl Buntings, Robin, Dunnock and 4+ Reed Buntings. Then i took a look along the tree line, and the stream between the car parks. This held some Chiffchaffs, a closer look and there seemed to me to be 3 different races there. At least 2 of our usual race collybita, but then there was a really brown looking individual, probably abietinus. Plus 2 Siberian Chiffchaff types, tristis. So hard to photograph though, they never stopped moving around.



   We then returned to Brixham Harbour to see if anything was any closer, sadly nothing was!!! Lovely sunny day though, and always a nice place to be anyway.