It was a grey wintry day out east today….
Some gulls out east
Tag: Black-legged Kittiwake
A quick trip east
No eagles in Esan on Christmas Eve (except for a couple of flyover White-taileds high in the sky). But lots of kittiwakes…
The crossbills appear to have left the cape but there were Brambling, Rustic Bunting and a small flock of Redpoll…
000’s of them
Thousands of kittiwakes east of town today…
None of them had red legs.
Some rivermouth gulls
There were 8 or 9 gull species at the rivermouth in Yakumo the weekend before last…including lots of kittiwakes.
And the various winter gulls…
Autumn here
The resident Slaty-backed and Black-tailed Gulls have been joined by some others. Lots of Vega Gulls last weekend as well as these 2.
There were also Whooper and Bewick’s Swans, various ducks, lots of Great Egret and this lone wader.
Upstream there were a few salmon (but not many: hope this just means they’re late) and the first eagle of the season. Crappy pic but always nice to see the first one.
2019 Over
Another year almost over.
East of town one of the ports was full of Kittiwakes.
000’s of them but no Red-leggeds sadly.
The same influx happened 2 years ago at the same place.
Not much else around: White-tailed Eagle, Harlequin Duck, Glaucous-winged Gull, Black-necked Grebe……….
000’s of Kittiwakes
There were absolutely loads of Kittiwakes east of town today as well as seemingly equally large numbers of Common Gulls.
All the Kittiwakes that came close enough to ID were Black-legged. They were a scruffy bunch.
Hopefully they’ll stick around and I can find a Red-legged one.
Nasty weather but quite a few birds were present on the east coast around to Onuma: Mountain Hawk-Eagle, Peregrine, White-tailed and Steller’s Sea Eagles, Eastern Buzzard, Harlequin Duck, Red-necked Grebe etc. At Onuma it was very quiet in the late afternoon gloom but Smew and Goshawk were both around.
More autumn staples
There were about 100 Black-legged Kittiwake at Yakumo on Monday as well as 7 other species of gull around. The Kittiwakes are regular autumn visitors to the Pacific coast, sadly I couldn’t find any Red-legged ones.
Other stuff around included lots glocks of various ducks, Peregrine, Osprey, Common Kingfisher, Great Egret and Great-crested Grebe.
Upstream there are already plenty of Salmon gathering: the eagles will be here in 3 or so weeks…………..