11th September - I made another early afternoon visit vaguely hopeful that a skua might fly over, as some had been reported flying over London. However, on arrival, it was fairly obvious that not much was happening. After a quick scan of the usual birds, I settled into watching fly over birds. Shortly after 1pm, I noticed a small, darkish looking tern flying in high from the north over the north-eastern side. A quick look through the scope confirmed my suspicions that it was a
juvenile Black Tern. It never looked particularly settled and was often flying higher than the surrounding trees doing a bit of mid-air preening and also ranging quite a way outside the pit. However, it also came down the lake to surface feed on several occasions. It landed on the end of the spit for about 5 minutes enabling me to grab some record shots:
So, although looking like it was going to leave any minute, it stayed at least 2 hours whilst I was there and was still present at 3:10pm when I left.
A quick pre-work visit in the morning found the semi-regular 3 Common Terns, an adult and 2 juveniles. They are often not at the lake though, so I wonder if they visit the river or nearby pits. 5 Shoveler was a slight increase on previous days.
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