Viewing entries tagged
ELOC

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WRECKED SEABIRDS IN RIBCHESTER

Pomarine Skua, Red Bank, Ribchester 4 November 2023

4 NOVEMBER and a photo of an adult skua is posted on a Ribchester residents Facebook page! It is apparently on the path between Boat House and Red Bank, my old local patch. I have walked this path hundreds of times! Within minutes Lee Parnell has zoomed along there and confirmed it as a Pomarine Skua! The first ever twitchable in the ELOC area! Sadly it is not in a good state, appearing exhausted. I was there soon afterwards and we figured out what to do. After lots of phone calls, including to a RSPCA inspector who lives in Rib, we were no further forward. No-one cares about wrecked seabirds anymore, maybe owing to the AI risk? So, with no facilities to look after it, we left it to take its chances and it was inevitably found dead next morning. A sad end for a magnificent bird.

Just over a month earlier, on 29 September, Phil Larkin reported a Northern Gannet in his Ribchester garden!!! Another storm-blown seabird and only slightly more regular in East Lancs than the Pom. The gannet’s fate was uncertain, it was captured in Boyce’s Brook and released on the river. It lingered a while but then disappeared. Now this bird had definitely encountered AI, with one balckened iris. Whether or not it was still suffering is not known but its occurrence was following another severe storm so it may have simply been an AI survivor?

Northern Gannet, Greenside, Ribchester 29 September 2023

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RED PHALAROPE IN EAST LANCS

Red Phalarope (first winter), Lower Foulridge Reservoir, East Lancashire

IT’S ONLY TAKEN ME 18 YEARS to catch up with a Red (or Grey) Phalarope in East Lancs! I moved here in 2005, a week after the New Laithe Farm scrapes bird, so I owe the finder of this one, Ian Corbett a big thank you! Apart from a fly-by bird at Stocks I can’t think of another one in the intervening period. I have seen hundreds of them this summer on the Alaskan tundra so it was great to see the next stage of their life cycle, a first winter bird on migration. It has been windy lately, and it is maybe the same weather that brought the American passerines to the west that delivered this lovely little bird to East Lancs. They are often storm-blown inland. It was feeding very actively and interestingly mostly in a tiny inlet on the SE corner of Lower Foulridge Reservoir. Typically ultra tame it walked right past me a few times less than a metre away but it would not do this for the folks standing bolt upright. I can’t understand why birders don’t get this. Or maybe they don’t own a washing machine? Anyway the R5’s flipscreen came into its own again, no need to lie down in the mud anymore.

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RING-NECKED DUCK AT FISHMOOR

Ring-necked Duck, Fishmoor Rservoir, 15 October 2021 (fifth from left)

SO MY ELOC LIST WENT UP BY ONE. Following on from the poor views of Pectoral Sandpiper at Alston last month a juvenile Ring-necked Duck on Fishmoor Reservoir, found by John Wright, kept my ELOC counter moving. Another good catch up after missing the drake at Stocks twice earlier in the year. Incidentally the Pec at Champion Moor flood pool was just before I arrived in East Lancs in 2005 so Gav’s Alston bird was another good one to get back. The Ring-necked Duck was an interesting plumage for me, new for me in the UK at least I think. Fishmoor is a shit hole though, surrounded by housing now and I see there’s what looks like an unecessary new road cutting through what used to be wasteland to the southwest. There used to be rough grassland all around it when I first moved here. There’s hardly room for a Meadow Pipit to turn around now.

Ring-necked and Tufted Ducks

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RISE OF THE JAYS

Jay collage from the benches by the school in Ribchester

I WAS LATE ON THE RIVERBANK TODAY after spending a couple of hours spotlighting with Alexander for Tim’s dog, which went missing last night. We checked the fields, ditches and riverbank but in the opposite direction to where she was eventually found, just before midnight near the Ribchester Arms, about 1km from where she disappeared. Well it was an interesting nocturnal walk, livened up by lots of rabbits, hares and a Tawny Owl. This morning a warm southerly wind was blowing across the valley bringing with it several Red Admiral butteflies that were wafted across the river like leaves. A jay was calling from the tree next to the school and eventually crossed the river in the other direction. I am seeing lots more jays than usual even accounting for autumn activity. A pair of sparrowhawks soared over the river, while small numbers of squeaking meadow pipits passed on their way south. A noisy kingfisher was also about in its usual spots around the island and a flock of seven lapwings flew west down the valley on a gorgeous sunny morning before it was time to go and look for a petrol station that actually still had some petrol and head off to Oldham climbing .

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