The Tide is High

Warning! Before reading further please note there are no birds mentioned at all!!!

After a night of southerly gales and torrential rain I was going to get out early to look at the sea, it was still raining quite hard when I awoke though, so I didn't find staying in bed a difficult choice to make. When I eventually peered out of the bedroom window towards the harbour I could immediately tell that the water was VERY high indeed and moving faster than I'd ever seen it before! I also noticed an unusually large number of people around. They were all looking at something, when my brain was finally fully 'booted up' I realised they were all gawping at a couple of boats which had sunk and another one perilously close to following them. In fact it later transpired that a total of four boats had indeed sunk, two of them were completely submerged or even swept out to sea!! Either way not visible.

Here's some pictures of the drama:

I could tell the water had been very high when I saw this pheasant feeder in amongst the boats on the boat park.

A view of the mayhem with both sunken boats visible

This was the boat that was near to capsizing. Notice the teleloader in the background, you don't think anyone would be reckless enough to get into that bucket and be inched out over the raging torrent do you?

Of course they would!


One of the unfortunates.
Notice in the background the Tea Caddy cafe is OPEN!! Would you believe me if I assured you this is quite normal on a wet Saturday morning in December!! It must have done a roaring trade as the srtiken boats were pulling in the crowds all day long.


The second submerged boat. This one was later recovered.


More reckless behaviour! Look at these guys leaning out of this boat with no life jackets. Moments after this photo was taken one of them leapt over the gap between the boats. The water was moving very quickly, much worse than it looks here.

The river mouth. This is normally a bit of a gentle stream four hours after high water. I'd like to have seen it at high water, but perhaps not from this position!!

Finally to give you some idea of the speed of the flow here's a little video, it still doesn't look as impressive as it really was though!

Stop Me If You've Heard This Before.....

If you've read Steve's blog you will know that the Axe Estuary Ringing Group were mist netting at Colyford Common yesterday. I'm afraid I'm going to repeat some stuff Steve's already mentioned but I took the photo's so I might as well post them on here. What else can I do with them? After Steve had to leave for work we continued for almost another five hours so I do have some other birds to mention too! In fact we caught a total of 76 including another first for the group.

It was another freezing morning and after chiseling my way into the car I eventually arrived at Colyford Common at just after 07:30, it was only just getting light. There was an intense haw frost, the thickest I've seen for ages here, it was very pretty to look at but my feet were in painfully frozen mode before the first hour was up!! Here's a couple of photos of it:

Deja Vu!

The water in the new reedbed was frozen solid making for some amusing 'running' Moorhens.

Yawn

Ringing HQ was not in the nice cosy 'Colyford Box' but on the icy cold platform like so:


We were particularly hoping to catch and ring Pipits, especially Water Pipits and Rock Pipits and we weren't disappointed, with all three species caught.

Meadow Pipit, just look at them claws!

Looking up the finer points of Water Pipit Id.

The Water Pipit

The clinching Id feature, as Steve mentioned in his blog the white wedge on the second to outermost tail feather is only seen on the Water Pipit.

A nice close up.... and why not?

We also caught three Rock Pipits, possibly including littoralis. Don't ask me though! I ringed one of these and I'm pretty sure it was just an ordinary petrosus. As for the other two, well the jury's still out. Take a look at them, if you know your Rock Pipits you may have an opinion.

The Three Rockits
( that sounds like a cheesy 1960's pop group)

'My' bird is the one in the front, I'm convinced it's petrosus. What about the others though?

What else did we catch? As you probably already know there was a gorgeous male Cetti's Warbler, definitely NOT just a LBJ, and here he is:

Not exactly the same as Steve's photo. It's facing the other way!!

.... and here he shows off the' famous' Cetti's 10 tail feathers.

We caught lots of commoner birds including stacks of Blackbirds and Dunnocks, also Chaffinches, House Sparrows, Goldfinches, Wrens, Robins, a couple of Chiffchaffs which were probably wishing they'd kept flying to the south of France! A Song Thrush, Blue Tits, Great Tit and a small flock of Long-tailed Tits. Here are a few photos, they looked great in the sun:

I got to 'stroke' a few of these

Steve 'hates' these but I don't, they're great!

So are these, obviously! A nice female here.

Altogether! ....... Aaaaah!

A big highlight for me was my first Goldcrest. They are just so small in the hand, about the size of a large grape!! The crest is just so vivid too.

Male Goldcrest

A couple of Kingfishers were unexpected, one an adult 're-trap' from a previous year and also a young female which would have hatched this year (I think at least our 18th this year). Kingfishers are always very docile in the hand and will lie still with absolutely no restraint like so:


It's interesting behaviour, probably a defense mechanism. They never seem unduly stressed by being handled, but who really knows, I'm not pretending I do. They do quickly return to normal behaviour and are often seen fishing very near to where we originally caught them.

A 'new' bird for the group and definitely the 'Bird of The Day' was this Fieldfare, a gorgeous brute he was too.

Wow!

and a close up. Gorgeous!

Finally, we also caught this female Stonechat:

A bit boring after the Fieldfare but I've included this photo because an hour after it was taken I saw this same bird ( I can't be absolutely certain, obviously, there's a slim chance it was another we'd rung on a previous occasion, but there was only a single pair seen the whole time we were there) as I was leaving, she was feeding along the pathway by the gate, she moved off a bit more distant as I approached but I took a snap of her, it was almost getting dark so its very poor but you can make out the recently fitted ring (specs needed if worn).

Did I Say That?

In a blog entry this morning (see below) I said" I 'need' Jack Snipe for my patch yearlist but to be honest I don't think I'll bother to make any more effort to get one"

Less than two hours after making this rash statement I was reading a text from Steve asking if I wanted to go looking for Jack Snipe at Coronation Corner again. My resolve crumbled as easily as a truckle of Wensleydale and within half an hour I was stomping around the salt marsh again. Not that it did any good, only four Common Snipe showed themselves today.

I took this photo whilst pointing my camera directly at the sun, it's turned out pretty atmospheric I think:


There were lots of ice-covered pools out on the salt marsh but obviously a couple of responsible adults like Steve and myself wouldn't indulge in anything as childish as ice smashing, would we?
In fact look at this photo of Steve:

He's thoughtfully picking up some poor injured creature.

Oh, it's not, it's a big sheet of ice, but he wouldn't be childish enough to.....

Oh!

Ice smashing is great fun though. Well, so Steve tells me! ;-)

This afternoon I looked for the Firecrests at Jubilee Gardens but had no joy today. There was a nice Buzzard circling over the gardens though, being given a very hard time by the local Beer seagulls. Here's a photo of the (to quote our old friend J. Wentworth-Day) " craven-hearted, foul-smelling killer of young rabbits and eater of beetles". A bit harsh I think!

No coward in my eyes.

I spotted this description of the buzzard in a chapter of 'Wild Wings and Some Footsteps' about the Grey Heron in which I also read this fascinating gem:

" The heron, the old men of the marshes will tell you, has an oil or essence in his legs which distills slowly into the water as he stands, and draws the fish to him! That is why they sometimes shoot a heron, cut his legs off, boil them down until the oil floats in a thin scum, which they skim off with a spoon, and then mix with a paste of flour, water and honey which, they say, is the deadliest fish lure of them all.
But who would shoot so noble and grand a bird, either for the dubious pleasure of eating him or the baser alchemy of fish lures?"