Avocet Chick At Freiston Shore

Today was a grab it while you can sort of day weather wise, there is trouble brewing in the Atlantic again, and storms are due to sweep the country over the weekend. We decided to head down to Freiston for a few hours. I was quite keen to see what happened to the Black Headed Gull colony there that we saw when we here four weeks ago.

The news is, most of the colony seems to have nested, had chicks and moved on, but there were still a large number of Black Headed Gulls on the islands on the lagoon. There was an even larger number of chicks. There were all the squabbles and noise you would expect from a large colony of birds. There was also a poor Great Crested Grebe trying to get his lunch, but being hassled for his fish by the gulls who saw an easy opportunity. To see the gulls confusion when the grebe dived was quite comical.

I also wanted to see how the Avocet colony on the same reserve had fared.

Again there were a healthy number of chicks there, which I hope all bodes well for the continued recovery of this species.

I managed to film 30 seconds worth of this chick I have blipped and put it up on YouTube, you can see that here.

Some of my other favourite pictures from the day:


Young House Sparrow

Watchful Mum

I really like this Snail In The Undergrowth picture.

Great Crested Grebe With Fish

Black Headed Gull Gathering Nesting Material

Loads more can be found in this Flickr set.