| Driving past Pope's Marsh mid-morning yesterday the 4th of April, I guestimated a flock of upto 100 Brents feeding south of the A149 and further guestimated upto 300 feeding north of the road. Apart from making a mental note of "good numbers for the date", I thought no more of it until going into the Search Sightings page of the CBC website and finding just how good these numbers are. Although it would appear that data for Cley Marshes earlier than 2012 have yet to be entered, I wonder if anyone is able to firstly improve on my rough count yesterday and also provide information on any April counts prior to 2012.
A final thought, I wonder if these birds, when they finally get to their breeding grounds, will have to contend with a further late arrival of Spring/Summer weather conditions and cope with the increased risk of ground predators if there is a late ice-melt around the nesting islands.
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| We also thought there seem to be good numbers still around for April as there also for other ducks such as Wigeon.
However looking at the figures for the last 7 years it does not seem exceptional.
March April May
2006 1800 1224 881
2007 1400 867 350
2008 1383 1000 715
2009 1300 500 456
2010 1350 2000 700
2011 1357 754 300
2012 2000 250 1500
These are the maximum counts at a single site within the Square, no doubt they would be higher if all flocks were added together. The 1500 in May 2012 were at/from Blakeney Point on the 13th, and the c.2000 in April 2010 were on the 2nd at Cley.
With regard to data on the website I hope to start loading 2011 data soon, but it will take a while to get all loaded.
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