Bank holiday lie-in

Unlike the UK, it's not actually a bank holiday here; however, strong winds put a stop to any thoughts of ringing so we made the most of things and stayed in bed for a few extra hours. The morning was slow going with no birds around at all; then something suddenly changed and a large flock of several hundred Honey Buzzards pass south over the observatory along with an Osprey, a Peregrine, a couple of Marsh Harriers and good numbers of Sparrowhawks.

Christian and I headed to the shops via the harbour road. It was quieter than the other day, though there were now five Garganey.

A large flock of Yellow Wagtails were feeding between the cattle; most weren't possible to race on plumage, though some extremes clearly belonged to one race or another, including at least two thunbergi (the reality is that most of them were probably thunbergi), one flava, and one apparent thunbergi–flava intergrade. A rather yellow-headed bird was probably just a yellowish example of one of the above.

1cy thunberi

The Honey Buzzard passage continued, and we also managed to scope a distant adult White-tailed Eagle.

Finally, I keep forgetting to post this. It's a spider that we saw while we were ringing waders at Nabben. It's about an inch across and is clearly built to live in sand. I was going to put my finger there for a sense of scale but it looked horribly like the sort of spider that might be able to bite me... Anyone got any ideas?