Wednesday 16 August 2017

Sandpipers and Garganey at Rye Meads

10th August 2017

Time for a quick visit to Rye Meads to see how the Autumn migration is getting on. At Rye Meads the water levels are kept high during the Spring and Summer to suppress the growth of vegetation thereby ensuring that there is plenty of wet mud when the levels are dropped in the Autumn. As I entered the Draper Hide I was pleased to see that the water levels were indeed much lower than my last visit exposing large areas of spits and muddy margins just in time for the first returning sandpipers.

Today there were two Common Sandpipers which were feeding non-stop, sometimes coming close enough for some shots.








There were also four Green Sandpipers enjoying the newly emerged mud and the area was large enough for the two species to share the food without conflict.












Now on to the Gadwall Hide to try and find the four Garganey that have been present for the last couple of days. I did eventually manage to track them down, but only three birds and for most of the time just two birds were sticking together.






How many times do you see a hat-trick of Garganey?










Wow, that was worth it and here is to more visits to this well managed reserve.




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