Following on from Kendrew's comments, I was up in Newtownards today and took the chance to scan out for these newly arrived birds at the north end of Strangford Lough.
Not ideal conditions - very windy, with choppy seas, but counted 243 (that sounds like a very accurate count - which it's not!!). Normal sort of numbers for the last day in August.
These birds will prove difficult to identify individually for about ten days or a fortnight, as they tend to remain on the water on the in-coming tide, and follow the edge (unfortunately mainly in the water) on the way out. From then on they are forced to forage more on the inter-tidal mudflats, and that is when our main ring-reading effort there must concentrate over the following month/six weeks.
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