Tide Mills 13/11/17

A change was due and having not seen a Purple Sandpiper for a while I felt Tide Mills was a reasonable choice. There were 5 Purple Sandpipers on East Pier, 2 Black Redstarts feeding together by the factories, a Brambling and Redpoll flew over and a redhead Goosander flew in off the sea and landed in Mill Creak, stayed for around twenty minutes and then flew off strongly east.

Also recently I've found a few Great Black-backed Gulls bearing colour rings and have had some bits of information back, with the most interesting being an adult bird seen last week that was ringed in 2008 in southern Norway as a juvenile, and being last seen in 2010 in northern France.

redhead Goosander at Tide Mills - taken with my phone through my bins hence the awful quality

this 2nd winter Great Black-backed Gull (JC383) was ringed in southern Norway on 04/07/2016 and was last recorded on 18/04/2017 further east along the same coastline, having been to northern France for the winter in between.