The long-tailed duck and several goldeneye were still in front of ARC Hanson hide as well as two bitterns, a smew and a black-necked grebe. The two great white egrets and two whooper swans were seen at Denge Marsh. Two bullfinches were seen out the back of Christmas Dell and three swallows flew over. Two black redstarts were still around the car park, a short-eared owl was seen from the entrance track and eight little gulls were seen on New Diggings.
Despite the work in progress on the Quarry Lapwing and Golden Plover numbers have increased daily this week. This morning 2000+ Golden Plover and 1200 lapwing were roosting around Flat Beach and on some of the new islands created yesterday. Merlin and Peregrine have also been present this morning the later creating havoc as hundreds of roosting birds take too the sky. Additional highlights this week from Flat Beach have included 62 Brent Geese, 32 Shelduck and 14 Snipe. Update at 2pm, a Snow Bunting landed briefly amongst Skylarks near Parkes Hide before heading west, 76 Ringed Plover and 380 Oystercatcher joined the increasing numbers of Golden Plover which has peaked at around 3000 this afternoon.
