Pennington Marsh - 12th January

After dropping Tobias at school I spent my first morning of 2018 at Pennington Marsh. I only had a couple of hours and my main aim was to try to see a patch tick. So after enjoying the spectacle of high numbers of Teal, Wigeon, Pintail, Lapwing, Curlew, Black-tailed Godwit and Golden Plover on Pennington Marsh I headed for the seawall. Here, I soon located the Red-necked Grebe off the jetty that had been present for a couple of weeks and while scope views were okay it was far too distant for any photographs, still, can't complain it was great to get a patch tick on my first visit this year. Also here, a single Great-northern Diver flew west and a Spotted Redshank showed well on Pennington Lagoon. The morning had started misty but it soon became quite a pleasant still day and I enjoyed my time at the marsh even though there birds were the typical winter fare.

I was limited for time as I needed to get to a bird survey up the road at Marchwood for 11:20 but after this I headed to Beaulieu Road Station, my plan was to find a flock of Parrot Crossbill but despite playing recordings in suitable habitat I saw none (not very surprising). It was deadly quite and other than a few common woodland birds plus Dartford Warbler I saw/heard very little and then it was time to pick Tobias up from school and head for home.

Pintail - Pennington Marsh

Wigeon - Pennington Marsh

Teal - Pennington Marsh

Cormorant eating a ridiculously large Eel - Pennington Marsh

Cormorant eating a ridiculously large Eel, down it goes - Pennington Marsh

Spotted Redshank - Pennington Marsh

Black-tailed Godwit - Pennington Marsh

Here is a recording of a flock of Black-tailed Godwit feeding on the grassland just off the Lower Pennington Lane car park. In the background can be heard Teal, Wigeon and Lapwing. The godwits are the 'chuck' calls in the foreground of the recording.

Ruff - Pennington Marsh

Ruff - Pennington Marsh

This is a recording of the general soundscape at Pennington Marsh, here can be heard Wigeon, Pintail, Teal, Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Curlew, Blue Tit and Canada Goose plus me fumbling the microphone - its a busy place.

And here are some general recordings from the day, the Spotted Redshank was from Pennington Marsh with the 'pliip' of Teal in the background. The Reed Bunting (with a churring Wren in the background) and Mistle Thrush are from Beaulieu Road Station while the Song Thrush is from Marchwood.

Reed Bunting

Mistle Thrush

Song Thrush - Quite a remarkable difference from the Mistle Thrush with notes over a wider bandwidth (at least 2.5-8.5 kHz compared to 1.5-3.5 kHz in Mistle Thrush) and in far less standardised sequences.