Purple Patch

Today my daughter Kathryn and me headed to Porthcawl and Sker point. We started out today has always at Salt Lake car park and there were good number of gulls, they were mostly Herring and Black Headed gulls and a single Lesser Black Backed Gull. I took a loaf and a half of bread with me for them and as hard as I searched I could not find any rung birds apart from a single Black Headed Gull with a alum ring and I don’t why they do it as you cannot read the ring. I forgot to pack my rocket net and Kathryn had the job of throwing the bread, I said will you keep a couple of slices for later and she said mmmmmmm. Next thing she said I only got one slice left and I thought bugger and yes Mike you do rub off on people. So next stop was a drive west to Victoria Avenue, armed with my single slice of bread I started throwing it out and like clockwork there were five Med Gulls with the Black Headed Gulls.  I picked up this one with a white ring straight away, I was lucky has he was the closest gull there. The bread soon went and with that another Med turned up with a ring, it looked white too but I no more bread left and it soon flew off. Well I thought  as I am here I will have a look for Purple Sandpipers, I saw movement on the rocks and the very first bird I checked was a Purple Sandpiper. I thought is this a fluke or what and as I scanned there were more and more, in fact there were nineteen in total also there were only four Turnstone.

Next stop was Rest Bay and a walk to Sker Point. It started really quiet with only a couple of dozen Common Gulls on the football pitch also four Oystercatchers. Has I got closer to Pink Bay I could see loads of Oystercatchers on the rocks, I started my count from there to Sker and this is what I had, 108 Oystercatchers, 49 Turnstones, 1 Purple Sandpiper, 200 Golden Plover, 16 Curlew, 1Ringed Plover, 1 Redshank, 1 Shag, 1 Great Crested Grebe flying up channel and a distant duck on the sea which I thought first was maybe an Eider but the more I looked at it I think it was a female Common Scoter.  I wished I had taken my scope. To finish we picked two bags of rubbish off the beach and we also saw a couple picking litter too, if only there were more people like this. We passed about 40 to 50 people walking and if they all did the five minute beach clean it would make hell of a difference. Last thing there seemed to be what looked like a dead blue jellyfish on the beach, you could make the stingers out. Also Ray or Skate egg cases everywhere also cuttlefish. It was great to spend a couple of hours with Kathryn and Munch.  Also on the way home we had a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly flying over the bridge at Briton ferry.

 I have put the ring up date in the comment part below.