Sabine's Gull

for many years I have waited for  a local close Sabin'e to photograph and they never came so the bird at Belvide finally tempted me to do what is for me a long twitch nowadays  -- a shame the Met office got the weather wrong and the sun came out as you could only see the bird looking west and the rough water produced a lot of white froth and the water was bright and etc etc -- but hopefully now I have been and seen one another one will come along closer to home with the light better -- but superb birds and so like a phalarope in pattern and actions but when swimming like a gadfly petrel as well a convergence of evolutionary pattern

dream bird

Avocets

and the odd Spoon

Teal

Pintail arriving

Pintail are a real September - October bird on the Humber passing quickly west no doubt heading for the west coast estuaries

Spoonbills

after a peak of 17 birds mid month there have been between 8 and 13 birds at this site but just how many are the same birds? one of these has a distinct yellow throat not seen on previous immatures and one looks like a juvenile?

juvenile Ruff

Marsh Harriers

the number of birds and proportion of juveniles to males of different ages and females seems to change daily at this time of year but I finally managed to get a readable shot of the wing-tagged juvenile, white left / yellow right,  that has been here for a couple of weeks; also here a moulting adult male -- males tend to linger longest by the nest sites only starting their moult when all the young have fledged and started to disperse

Shelduck

nice light

post-juvenile moult in Black-tailed Godwit

an early moulting islandica