The Lincolnshire Bird Club

American Black Tern still present at Covenham this morning, frequenting the North side, from 0930 until I left at 1130. Along with:
1 x (f) Sparrowhawk, 2 x Housemartins, 2 x drake Pochards, 2 x Kestrels.
A walk from Stonebridge car park to Pyes Hall after lunch produced very few passerines - too windy or wrong time of day? Highlight was a female Marsh Harrier quartering the Marsh, 2x Little Egrets, perhaps two dozen Golden Plover and a single Grey Plover. Lots of Brent Geese near the car park entrance and a single (f) Wheatear.

Cheers,
Matthew.

ABT seen at Spurn mid-morning yesterday (03/10) until midday. Seen drifting south.

Same one on a day trip

even on a direst line it is 19kms between the narrows and Covenham -- 12:10 at Spurn and at least 12:43 at Covenham seems highly unlikely to be the same bird but it woulkd be good to know whether it was at Covenham earlier in the morning? anyone see it?

Why would it be highly unlikely to be the same bird? It would need to be flying at a speed of 35 km/h to have travelled 19km in 33 mins; surely a Black Tern wouldn't have a problem flying at this speed.

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www.nickclayton.net
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that would of course assume that it arrived back at the res at 12:43 and was not there already at that time ; facts of course which we do not have access to unless someone can say one way or the other; there was also a force 4-5 SSW wind blowing at the time --- there are no pictures on the Spurn web site to compare with the Lincs bird at present

I’m not saying it’s completely impossible that it’s another ABT but the point I was making is it’s far more likely that it was the same bird considering its great rarity in this country, it would be a large coincidence indeed that another should turn up just 12 miles away from the Covenham bird, especially when the Covenham bird wasn’t reported as being present. It’s likely that the ABT would have been picked up fairly quickly once it returned to Covenham with the popularity of the bird.

Black Tern are capable of far greater flight speeds than 35 km/h, I found one study on the internet which stated they have an average flight speed of 60 km/h during migration, so I’m sure our ABT could maintain 35 km/h even into a head wind.

The whole point of this is I was surprised you stated “seems highly unlikely to be the same bird” when I would have thought this was the more likely scenario, but I’m sure people will make up their own minds what they think and hopefully there will be further evidence to indicate which scenario is correct.

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www.nickclayton.net
www.nickclayton.co.uk

A very good write up and pictures by the finder in this months Birding World.

Hugh