Newtown bird walk, 10th March 2018

Nine members met at Newtown NT car park for a walk led by Nicky Falconar on the Nature Reserve. The weather forecast was for sunshine and showers and rain was threatening as we left the car park. Someone was just leaving and advised us that a pair of Goosander were in the Scrape so we headed down there. We arrived within ten minutes and what we saw was a pair of Red Breasted Merganser and, a little later, a pair of Pintail but no Goosander. The Black-headed Gulls and Mediterranean Gulls were congregating on and around the islands and 76 Mediterranean Gulls and 191 Black-headed Gulls were counted. There were six Teal in amongst the vegetation and about 100 Dunlin and two Grey Plover were out on the mud. At least seven Curlew were in a field at Brickfields and some Canada Geese and a Peregrine was on one of the Osprey nest poles. There was a Great Black Backed Gull on the marsh as well as 90 Shelduck. As the rain had stopped and we had a sunny interlude we headed out to the boat house and saw two Meadow Pipits fly whilst we were on the bridge. A lone bird was spotted standing in the vegetation near the bridge and we stopped to take a look and had excellent views of a Knot. It started to rain again and we turned round and went up the side of the meadow and saw two Yellowhammer. We took a slight detour to overlook the estuary at Cassey Bridge but as the tide was well out we did not see many ducks although we did see a few Wigeon. The field opposite had Brent and about 20 Starlings. In all we saw 37 species. Jackie Hart.