Dave and I went straight to
Rutland Water today as there had been an Azorean Yellow-legged Gull seen
yesterday on lagoon four. However all we
could find was two adult Yellow-legged Gulls, although the Azorean was reported
at some time during the day. There were
circa twenty Golden Plover flew over lagoon four and a single Shelduck on the
lagoon but otherwise it was quiet.
We went to shoveler hide on
lagoon three were we located a female Red-crested Pochard and a Pintail and
Sparrowhawk flew over nothing else of interest was found amongst the raft of
wildfowl except for four Goldeneye, the first of the autumn.
There was a party of Lesser
Redpoll that flew over lagoon three towards the reed bed and the area of
woodland behind it.
As we walked to lapwing hide a
party of Blue and Long-tailed Tits contained a single Chiffchaff. When we arrived at lapwing hide there was
very little as three fishing boats had come right down into south arm three so
after a few minutes we went back to the Bird Watching Centre, seeing five
Siskins near the second feeding station.
All we could find on lagoon one was a single Pintail and there was far
fewer wildfowl than on previous visits so we decided to have an early lunch.
As we were leaving the hide we
saw John Wright who had found the Azorean gull yesterday. We spent a short while talking to him about
the gull and he confirmed that it wasn’t there this morning but also that he
had seen a juvenile male Red-breasted Merganser briefly on lagoon four and
suspected that it might have gone onto the main water.
After lunch we went back to
lapwing hide and whilst there were more birds, including seven Goldeneye, there
was no sign of the Red-breasted Merganser.
From shoveler hide on lagoon three there was clearly far more wildfowl
and particularly Tufted Duck. Dave found
an eclipse male Scaup and we located the Red-crested Pochard again but again
there was no sign of the merganser.
There were now seven Pintail and four Goldeneye were still present.
On lagoon four we found four
adult Yellow-legged Gulls and a second calendar year bird but there was still
no sign of the Azorean Yellow-legged Gull.
We did find two Dunlin and three Ruff and there were at least 200 Golden
Plovers that eventually settled on island one, where we also found a single
Redshank.
We spent the final half hour
of our visit in the centre were we saw the first female Goosander of the autumn
and two Curlew. We also had seven Little
Egrets in flight two of which settled for a while on lagoon one whilst another
dropped onto lagoon two.
We also found a micro moth Agonopterix
arenella in shoveler hide.
Mistle Thrush in the Egleton car park
Drake Shoveler on lagoon three
Agonopterix
arenella