Another leucistic tick, a drone and some snow bunts.

A trip over to Cleethorpes with the hope of seeing a shorelark ended up a very interesting day. The boating lake area held a flock of 75 (feral) barnacle geese and a snow goose.

I had no luck in tracing the shorelark, but eventually tracked down a flock of 16 snow bunts. I managed to get closer to them by creeping up on all fours, I was hoping to get closer when, suddenly this dropped down out of the sky, right where they were feeding!

Well, I wouldn’t have minded a sparrowhawk or a fox flushing them but you don’t expect that do you? I wasn’t too pleased but it was hilarious watching the owner trying to retrieve it, he was a long way away and started trekking across the swampy gully filled saltmarsh, wearing casual clothes. I wouldn’t have attempted that without waders on. I looked back half an hour later and he was still struggling.

After that I came across a linnet flock, a good search through them revealed just a single twite and my favourite bird of the day, a leucistic linnet. Some crap photos, but you get the idea.

A few rock pipits, yellowhammers, reed bunts and skylarks made up the rest of the lbj’s. Just noticed from my pics one of the snowbies is wearing a ring.