Pennington Marsh - 5th and 9th March

I visited Pennington Marsh on 5th and 9th March and on both days saw much the same. Its a pretty static time of year with winter birds steadily but barely noticeably declining and very few migrants appearing. The Lapwing are now in regular display and are busy making nesting scrapes on the marsh while Black-tailed Godwit are coming into plumage and are at varying stages of turning rusty. Up to eight Ruff were present on the marshes off Lower Pennington Lane and there remain good numbers of Wigeon, Pintail, Teal and Brent Goose as well as the usual waders. There were around 400 Golden Plover on Pennington Marsh on both days, an increase in previous numbers perhaps as a result of the recent cold weather movement. On 5th I counted 34 Bar-tailed Godwit off Butts Lagoon, a higher number than usual, all were still in winter plumage. On 5th a single Spoonbill flew high to the east.

Black-tailed Godwit with summer plumage beginning to appear on head, neck and scapulars - Pennington Marsh

Black-tailed Godwit with summer plumage beginning to appear on head, neck, wing coverts, tertials and scapulars - Pennington Marsh

Black-tailed Godwit with summer plumage beginning to appear on tertials - Pennington Marsh

Black-tailed Godwit with summer plumage beginning to appear on head, neck and scapulars - Pennington Marsh

Black-tailed Godwit with very little sign of moult to summer plumage - Pennington Marsh

Ruff - Pennington Marsh

Golden Plover - Pennington Marsh

Rock Pipit - Pennington Marsh

The Mute Swan were very feisty at the marsh today with marsh territorial aggression - Pennington Marsh

I added a number of sound recordings to this post linked to uploads at the Internet Bird Collection (IBC). With the subsequent transfer of data from IBC to the Macaulay Library the links to these became broken. I have therefore subsequently uploaded these sound files to eBird and the recordings can be viewed here and here.