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Saturday 29 March 2014

Coastal doom and gloom

A walk around the woodland patch this morning was encouraging, found white eggshell at the base of a conifer tree. I think it's Wood pigeon although it could be Collared Dove. Frustratingly it's too high anyway. A Tawny Owl box which was put up by the owners a couple of years ago was found to have last year's Jackdaw nest in it, a Blue Tit was seen pulling moss off a tree and my only sighting of Treecreeper which was back in January encouraging me to put up eight boxes was repeated - same area this morning.

The coast this afternoon however was bleak and so disappointing. The storms that raged through the UK and Europe earlier in the year have possibly decimated my sea-bird colony. At this time I would expect 10 pairs of breeding Cormorant and 20-30 pairs of breeding Shag. At present I have 3 pairs of Cormorant on nests and a fourth one half built, 4 pairs of Shag. The islet on which the Cormorant breed would house approx 10 pairs of Shag, today there wasn't a single one on it. Very worrying and we'll never know the full extent of the damage caused by those storms especially coming after two poor breeding seasons here.

I suppose it could be worse, I could have left my binoculars in Daniel's car who lives 14 miles away from me - Oh, I did!!!!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Simon.. Many thanks for your comment..

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  2. Yes Simom.. I am a Digiscoper.. Only.. :-))) Regards from Madrid..

    ReplyDelete