Saturday 5 November 2016

Another Visit to the Inter-tidal Area at Fingringhoe Wick

22nd October 2016

After a successful visit to photograph the White-fronted Geese at Cudmore Grove, time to move on to Fingringhoe Wick ahead of the incoming tide. Today high tide was late afternoon, so there was a lot more mud when I arrived, and the water from the River Colne hadn't yet started to flow into the lagoon. Therefore today was going to provide a lot more time with bare mud and a lot less time with high water as for my last two visits. So how would that pan out?

Well there were of course the compulsory Little Egrets, although for some reason this one was unhappy about sharing the 10 acres of mud available.


There were also a few of the larger waders like this Bar-tailed Godwit, but rather oddly no Black-tailed Godwits when you consider there were 1000+ last time. A few solitary Curlews were also sprinkled around with one providing a wing stretch.












For the small waders the situation was reversed with plenty of tiny Dunlin scurrying around compared to virtually none last time, and for some reason the Redshank were remarkably scarce.








In fact, by far the largest group of waders present were the plovers. Apart from numerous Lapwings, which today decided to keep their distance, there were good numbers of Ringed Plovers which will brighten up any day. Also the flock of Golden Plovers was building up nicely.








But the stars of the show today were the numerous Grey Plovers. With Grey Plovers you can get lucky, but most of the time tend to keep their distance. In fact they are a bird that I haven't often seen in front of a hide. But today was the exception and a couple of individuals came particularly close, one down to just 8 yards allowing some super close-up shots to be taken.














This bird somehow managed to get his feet stuck in the mud and had to virtually take off to free himself. What an absolutely fantastic day!!






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