Pennington Marsh and Crockford Bridge - 28th July

After some long hours working over the last couple of weeks I took a couple of hours off in the early morning and went to Pennington Marsh. I have not been to the marsh since the end of April and so a visit was long overdue. I walked out past Shoveler Pools and then back around Jetty and Butts Lagoons before heading back to the car. The weather was terrible, a strong westerly wind and heavy showers and so my visit was brief to say the least. I think most of the birds were sheltering and I saw relatively little. Around 25 Sand Martin were moving westwards into the wind, around 30 Black-tailed Godwit were on the lagoons, two Common Sandpiper, 15 Whitethroat, 75 Dunlin, a few Grey Plover in fine summer plumage and a Spoonbill on Butts Lagoon was about all I saw. I made a dash for the car and was soaked.

Black-tailed Godwit - Now in heavy moult

Black-tailed Godwit - This is a very warn winter plumage bird that had not 

moulted to summer plumage

Black-headed Gull - Now moulting to winter plumage

Black-headed Gull - A juvenile mouthing to 1st winter

Cormorant

Rock Samphire

Bank of rain approaching, it was very wet and windy and felt more like November than late July

Grey Plover - Fantastic birds in summer plumage

Spoonbill

As I left the weather brightened slightly and I decided to pop into Crockford Bridge in the hope of finding some sheltering Odonata - perhaps ridiculously optimistically. I wandered for around 50m east from the road and fairly quickly found a couple of Southern Damselfly and a Blue-tailed Damselfly but with more rain approaching I decided to head for the office.

Blue-tailed Damselfly

Southern Damselfly

Small Copper

Brown China-mark

Hampshire Purslane

Round-leaved Sundew