Rod's Birding: A day’s birding at Rutland Water, Rutland

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.