February 2025

28th. The RNLI at St Ives sent a small boat out to recover an unmanned emergency life raft.

The Island, St Ives: 8 red-throated diver, 1 black-throated diver, 4 great northern diver, female-type black redstart, 1 raven.

Rosemorran, Penzance: 3 common scoter, 1 velvet scoter (presumed first-winter drake), female eider and ca. 100 sanderling.

Lelant saltings: 2 goosander, spoonbill. 

17th.  Boat Cove Perranuthnoe: yellow-browed warbler making a circuit around the beach, feeding in Tamarisk bushes and sometimes on beach. Purple sandpiper Penzance seafront. There were 3-4 divers off the Jubilee Pool. Two were great northern, one may have been the Pacific diver that had been seen clearly shortly beforehand. One chiffchaff too. Lelant Saltings and Lelant Station: 4 goosander, 3rd-winter glaucous gull, adult Iceland gull (first seen by Steve Rodwell). Glaucous gull below.

Yellow-browed warbler

16th. Lelant Saltings: 3 goosander, 1 red-breasted merganser, 1 adult Caspian gull, 1 adult yellow-legged gull, 1 adult ring-billed gull, 1 probable first-winter ring-billed gull seen briefly before flying south, 265 dunlin. One black-tailed godwit on Ryan’s Field.

We moved house in Bristol on 13th, a major downsize with a nice garden on the edge of Westbury Park.

7th. Welford Park in Berkshire with Mona and Kiara to see the snowdrops (and winter aconite) on a grey, sometimes sleety winter's day with a old northerly wind. The weather created nice uniform lighting for photography in the beech woods, and there is a lovely chalk stream flowing through the site. Several red kites in the area too.

2nd. I stopped at Tamar Lakes on my return to Bristol, seeing 3 fieldfare near Bude, 1 willow tit, 2 marsh tit, a reed bunting, water rail, tree creeper and a nuthatch around the Tamar lake feeders.

1st: I missed the booted eagle leaving its roosting area when I arrived around 09.00h, and then walked across Marazion Marsh towards Little London beach. I saw a sanderling, ringed plovers and a purple sandpiper in from of the Godolphin Hotel. There were 2 chiffchaffs and a female-type black redstart at Little London., and about 120 teal on Marazion Marsh. Some goose barnacles were washed ashore on a float at Little London.

I returned to the railway bridge on the A394 to see the booted eagle during the afternoon.