Littleton-upon-Severn Provides

To be accurate the nearby Warth did, actually on the Estuary. Back up to the Midlands again yesterday, I had stopped very soon, hardly out of Bristol, at Severn Beach. All sorts of waders, terns and skuas have been passing the last few days. Wagtails and whatnot have also dropped in to the surrounding fields. Well, the odd swallow did show in about an hour but…

Let’s face it: the place just doesn’t deliver for me. I mosied further on into South Gloucestershire and a maze of lanes just north of what I still call the M4 but is now the M48. This is an area bounded by Aust, Thornbury and Oldbury, for which I was vaguely aiming. But I can’t resist a dead end so I pulled up by the sea wall at Littleton Warth and walked it a little way south.

This turned out to be the wrong direction although it didn’t seem so at first as the year’s first sedge warbler chattered in a bordering hedge. A distant lesser whitethroat joined the act but that was about it and I returned to the car. A parting scan of the upriver bank revealed what looked like curlews but in my heart I knew what they really were.

I beetled back for the scope and hoped the flock wouldn’t move on. My luck held and it only took moments to get that diagnostic central crown stripe of whimbrels. Seven of ‘em. Six days earlier than last year’s early Portland record and in fact only my eighth sighting of the species.

This post comes courtesy of my new ultra portable Eee PC and Dropbox, which has made bedding the machine in much easier. Wish I could say the same about getting email across. Live Mail seems determined to be as different as possible from Windows Mail such that I’m toying with the idea of converting to Google. But that has issues too. I’ll not bore you with them…

Related posts:

1. 1999: Whinchat & Knot, Severn Beach
2. Turnstones & Sanderlings, New Passage
3. Short-Eared Owl, Aust