Saturday 15 January 2022

Tetney Marshes Birding Bimble

 It was a very cold and foggy start to the day with temperatures around freezing.  At first it seemed as though it was going to clear for us but then the fog came in again and, on the coast, stayed for the day.  This made for very cold birding and Brian and I were well ready for our tomato soup and Christmas cake by one of the pill boxes which made a convenient table.  Our route was basically an out and back with a short loop from the lock gates.  We had parked by the boating lake at the Fitties Yacht Club where there was a great deal of activity, mainly from black-headed gulls and mallards but there were one or two mute swans, a few little grebes, wigeon and teal.  Having checked out the lagoon we then headed along the sea wall towards the sea lock at Tetney.  Here, the main interest was on the fields behind the sea wall: quite a few lapwing and a smattering of pheasants and gulls.  The two highlights, however, were the large flock of 300+ brent geese and two fields each with about 30 curlew feeding on them.  We were hoping for short-eared owl as 3 had been seen the day before but we were out of luck. The noisy alarm calls of redshank rang out over the salt marsh and we could see several little egret feeding in the creeks.  At the sea lock we walked alongside the haven (the point where the Louth Canal flows out to sea) for a short distance.  Here we could see more redshank and a small flock of teal as well as a few pied wagtails.  Following our soup and cake we quickly made our way back to the car park where we made a sweep of the beach finding shelduck and large numbers of oystercatcher as well as the bigger gulls:herring and common.  There were a few dunlin and knot in with the redshank and it was useful to be able to compare sizes.  Back on the lagoon we found some more teal amongst the wigeon and a solitary sleeping black-tailed godwit.  Although we didn't find stonechat today we were pleased with the snipe which zipped noisily away from under our feet.

All in all another good day.

To view large, please click on an image.  Photographs from the archives.

Brent Geese
Curlew
Black-tailed godwit
Black-tailed godwit
Little grebe
Dunlin

Brent geese

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