First Med in a while

12th November - it made a change to have some nice weather and I spent a while checking out the ducks and gulls.  The only bird of note was a 1st winter Med Gull, my first here since early September, though it only stayed for about 15 minutes for a quick preen and then was off west over the STW.  A few record shots:

I decided to do a few species counts, as it seemed that there had been a general increase in many of them - not all species were counted, but some selective ones were:

Common Gull - 76 - numbers of these will continue to rise as we go through the winter
GBB Gull - 1 - a regular adult, again there will be many more of these in the winter roosts
Wigeon - c80 - I reached 80, but there were some hidden at the back of the spit.  These will probably peak at around 150
Shoveler - 36
Gadwall - 18
Pochard - 27
Egyptian Goose - 25
Snipe - 7
Lapwing - c500 - these can rise to well over 1,000

Teal numbers were probably close to 100, but they were all over the place, so I didn't attempt a count.  GC Grebes were in excess of 20 and the Tufted Duck flock was well into 3 figures.  Amongst these it was nice to see the blue nasal-saddled female, code BFK, again.  She has returned here each autumn and spring and occasional dates in the winter since 2011 having been rung at St Philbert de Grand Lieu just south of Nantes in December 2010.

About 20 Siskins went over in a couple of flocks, single figures of Skylark and Mipit, c70 Redwings in a couple of flocks and getting on for 100 Woodpigeons.