Thank heaven for Little Gulls!

There was plenty of activity at the farm yesterday. As I arrived in the car-park, a large flock of Redwings, which I estimated at 120, were flying low towards the Lizard village.  Following on behind were 40 or so Fieldfares. A few individuals from both groups dropped down to feast on our bountiful hawthorn berries. Meanwhile, this Black Redstart was catching flies from the roof of the outbuildings.

On towards Ruan Pool and some 350 Lapwings were flapping around, with at least 500 Golden Plover doing aerobatics above them.  I settled down in the hide with my telescope to scan through the gulls. This may be hard to believe, but in the first few years of the reserve's existence, Black-headed Gulls were very rare visitors. In fact, despite hundreds of hours of observer coverage, it was four years before the first record! That may have been because until then we didn't have a suitable body of water to attract them. But it's only in the last two years that they've become much more regular, both in the spring and the winter.  As far as I'm aware, local farming practices haven't changed recently, so that wouldn't account for them appearing in greater numbers at the southern end of the peninsula. Yesterday there were about 60 of them splashing about in the water and in the midst of them was the reserve's first ever Little Gull! This is a scarce passage migrant and winter visitor to Cornwall and was a very nice surprise. There were also two Common Gulls amongst the group, another bird we rather surprisingly rarely see on the farm.

Little Gull on Ruan Pool (okay, it's not a frame-filler........)

Finally - a piece of the action.

The last few weeks have seen an unprecedented influx of American waders into the county. For this we can thank Irene and Katia for creating havoc in the north Atlantic weather systems. Almost every patch of mud in Cornwall has hosted some leggy shorebird or other from across the pond - but not our patches of mud at Windmill Farm.

Today was misty and eerily quiet. Having decided there was nothing about, I was idly and, it has to be said, carelessly trudging along the edge of our little scrape, which is almost dry, musing that I have seen Pectoral Sandpipers in the most unlikely of places. Not five seconds later, I heard a distinct call - "prrrt". I looked around in search of the culprit and there it was - a Pectoral Sandpiper, not 10 yards away. Three feet from it was another! We all froze. I ever so slowly down sat down. After an age, they decided I wasn't a threat and much to my relief carried on feeding.  After admiring them for a few minutes I slowly withdrew back into the mist and left them to it. 

The light was hopeless for photography today, so here are a couple of shots I got over the weekend of adders enjoying the warmth of the brief Indian summer. The top one is a youngster, about eight inches long, and below is an adult male.

 

Poser

Spotted Redshank on the Plantlife pond this morning.

Bring your own snacks....

Participants in a recent dragonfly workshop at the farm collected lots of dragonfly exuviae from around the ponds and brought them up to the information centre for examination. In case you're not aware, exuviae are the external shells of the aquatic larvae. When they're ready to fly, the larvae climb out of the water, usually up a rush-stem or similar, and slowly emerge as adult dragonflies, leaving these shells behind. The species and even the sex of the dragonfly can be established from studying them. Most of these are Emperors.




This box of exuviae has drawn a few wry comments in the visitors' book, of which my favourite is:

"Great place, don't think much of the crisps tho!"

We've had a few birdy highlights in recent days, including a Wryneck along the access road just 30 yards from the gate - it scraped on to my personal reserve bird-list by kindly perching in the hedge between the track and one of our fields. Nineteen Green Sandpipers feeding together around the edge of the Plantlife pond was a huge surprise. They are regular migrants at this time of year but generally in ones or twos. A flock of this size is very unusual anywhere.



The Black Kite that was hanging around down at The Lizard village made a couple of flyovers and, finally, we had a new species for the farm in the form of two Spotted Redshanks.

The third Emperor

Following the extremely rare Vagrant Emperor dragonflies that turned up at the farm in late April, and with the "bog-standard" Emperor a common resident species, we completed a 2011 hat-trick this week when a male Lesser Emperor was found. Although it's a rare migrant to Britain, recorded for the first time as recently as 1996, this is our second record following one in 2004. Lesser Emperors occur throughout southern Europe.

After I'd waited for about 15 minutes today, it duly appeared over the northern-most of our two specially-designed dragonfly ponds. It gave great views down to 10 feet as it cruised up and down, doing its best to evade aerial attacks by the Emperors. It failed to land whilst I was there but it was more obliging for Dougy and he got this rather good photo:


Later, he found two or three Migrant Hawkers along the boardwalk:



Thanks to Dougy for those photos. I had to make do with shots of a pair of Common Darters mating in flight, one of the scarce Red-veined Darters (at least two present today) and a female Emperor laying eggs in the pond: