Rod's Birding: A day’s birding in Leicestershire & Rutland

Dave and I went to Burrough Hill where we met Roger and spent a couple of hours vismiging. We initially went to the western edge of the old Iron Age fort and then walked north to a small valley leading to the summit as this is where there appeared to be a few birds moving. It was rather slow but we did thirty-five plus Meadow Pipits and a few Swallow, Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Goldfinch and Linnet. We eventually called it a day.

When we arrived at Rutland Water we went to the north arm where Roger soon located the Black-necked Grebe, which has been present for over a week now. There was also a single Ruff on the north shore, two Little Egrets and a juvenile and an adult Common Tern.

We went to Egleton Reserve where we had lunch before going to lagoon four. We soon located two Ringed Plovers, a single Golden Plover, two Dunlin and three Ruff and we heard at Greenshank but could not locate it. There was also a large concentration of gulls on the western edge so we moved to dunlin hide to get a closer view. They were mainly Black-headed Gulls but there were also plenty of Lesser Black-backed Gulls, a few Great Black-backed Gulls and I counted twelve Yellow-legged Gulls. Pintail numbers were beginning to increase and there were twenty-one on the lagoon. The Lapwing were very restless and flew high on several occasions and we eventually picked up a Peregrine, which eventually took a Kingfisher. Other had seen the Kingfisher flying across the lagoon and I did see the peregrine stoop at it on several occasions but didn’t actually see it until the Peregrine flew to one of the islands to devour it. There was also a Hobby briefly over the lagoon and a distance Sparrowhawk towards Oakham and a second briefly on the lagoon. The Peregrine remained on the island for the rest of our stay and could be seen to be a second calendar year bird as its mantle and some of the coverts were grey but there was still some juvenile brown coverts present.

Whilst all this had been going on I noticed a gull perched on one of the osprey posts and considered that it might be a Caspian Gull. It then flew and joined the rest of the gulls where the structural differences became obvious. It appeared tall and lanky with particularly long legs, the tibia being particularly noticeable. It was also more attenuated at the rear than other nearby gulls and the wings extended well beyond the tip of the tail. The bill was slimmer than nearby gulls and there was no obvious gonydeal angle with the forehead sloping gently away from it giving the head a less angular shape. The mantle was paler grey than nearby Yellow-legged Gull and most of the coverts were still juvenile, although some scapulars were grey. The tail-band was rather neat with a suggestion of a pale trailing edge, which was observed in flight. I suspect that this was an advanced first calendar year bird.

There were two female Siskin feeding in some alder as we walked back tot the centre, which were an unexpected bonus.

Lagoon one at the centre had plenty of duck on it but mot appeared to be Tufted Duck with just a few Pochard and odd Gadwall, Mallard and Shoveler. So we decided to visit the new 360° hide on lagoon five there was a reported Curlew Sandpiper. However when we arrived all we could find was an immature Dunlin and a Ruff. There was another nine Pintail on the lagoon and Dave noticed four Curlews roosting on one of the islands. There was also five Little Egrets scattered around the lagoon. This new hide gives superb views of the lagoon and hopefully some good birds in the future.

Our final call was to snipe hide on the wet meadow and on entering the hide we were told that there were two Curlew Sandpiper feeding but they turned out to be two juvenile Ruff with a third, an adult nearby. There was a single Little Egret and two Green Sandpipers present and a few Shoveler.

It had been a peasant afternoon at Rutland Water in the warm autumn sunshine an supplemented by some nice birds.