St Mary's Island

A Cycle along to St Mary's last week more for the fresh air than any expectation of anything exciting a sunny day again several hundred  Golden Plover along the Links road they seem to be regular now along with a couple of hundred Lapwings and Starlings they must attract a raptor at sometime .An amazing number of Black Headed Gulls feeding in the backwash from  Colywell Bay  to the causeway I scanned the lot but no Meds for me, huge piles of seaweed  in the north bay had at least 12 Purple Sandpipers amongst the waders feeding on the weed and the gulls picking from the water surface.  I walked as far as the Golf course where the track leads down to the fishing boats , again several hundred Black headed Gulls feeding in the surf with more Purple Sandpipers on the shore. At the wetland the presence of  a Scaup had attracted a crowd of twitchers well 4 including me apparently  a rarity on the patch , I had a couple on a Seawatch earlier in the year for the Blyth patch and Holywell Pond gets one now and again years ago they used to be regular off Druridge Bay.

You would have thought there would be at least one Med  in with them or even better a Bonaparte's 

Just what they feed on I don't know but it must be plentiful and worth the effort

Days like this draw lots of photographers and with a Rainbow right over the Lighthouse there must have been some good photos but you need a very wide angle lens to get it all in

I took some shots on the Panoramic setting  but no idea how to stitch them together