One good tern...........

9th September - I was working from home today and had seen a fairly steady fall of rain all morning, in fact by late morning it was raining pretty heavily.  Wet weather often produces some interesting birds at the pit, so by early afternoon when the rain had lightened and was expected to pass through, I decided to take a late lunch and have a look.

On arrival, there was still a steady drizzle, so I birded with a big brolly over me in one hand and the scope handle in the other.  There wasn't obviously anything new in, a juv Common Tern was patrolling the eastern side, the 2 Wigeon remained, Snipe numbered 3 on the western side of the spit and a Common Sand was probing the spit edge.  The regular adult YL Gull was in and a male Gadwall was possibly new in as well.  A Hobby flew over low and made a couple of assaults on the low flying Swallows and House Martins almost above my head before flying off east.

Shortly before 2pm, the rain subsided and I was able to put the brolly down.  I was scrutinising the hirundines flying low in the NW arm when I heard a familiar harsh 'kirrick' call several times to the south of me.  Knowing this was Sandwich Tern, I binned the end of the spit and saw 2 adult Sandwich Terns descend to the end of the spit - one was very white headed and in almost full winter plumage, the other had more black in the crest.  I hurried over to the viewpoint to try and grab some record shots, but in the few seconds that it took to get there, they had taken off again.  It was now obvious that there were actually 3 Sandwich Terns flying around and plunge diving off the end of the spit, as another very white headed winter plumaged adult was also present.  They were flying very close to me and the yellow tipped bills were quite obvious as was the lack of any apparent juvenile plumage.  I watched them for a few minutes until a Red Kite decided to fly fairly low over the spit putting up the BHG flock - the flock took off to the south taking the terns with them and I watched them fly low over the southern hedge presumably back to the Thames where they had probably come from in the first place.  That was that I thought, but a few minutes later, one of the white headed birds returned and began to fly up and down the southern side of the lake.  It plunge dived and caught a fairly large fish and then flew off to the eastern side where I lost it behind the island, before it returned and landed on the end of the spit.  Here it remained for some time, preening and roosting enabling others to get a view as well.  I took a few record shots of this bird:

I have now seen Sandwich Terns on 5 occasions at the pit and 3 of these have been when wet weather has been around, so obviously a good time to look for them.