Dave and I had decided to
visit Rutland Water as the Azorean Yellow-legged Gull had been present again
last night and Dave has not seen it.
There had also been a tweet regarding a Waxwing, Brambling and Crossbill
near Fieldfare hide but the news was rather sketchy so we decided to go to
lagoon three first.
However before we set off to
lagoon three, we had a quick scan of lagoon one first and found a female
Pintail and two female-type Goosanders.
Five more Pintail flew in whilst we were there but we could nothing else
of note.
The water level is at long
last dropping and there are a few areas of mud appearing. This seems to be particularly attractive to
Teal and there were another five Pintail present. There was at least nine Snipe, a Green
Sandpiper and two Redshank also and with reeds close to shoveler hide pruned it
is beginning to look more like the old lagoon three. A Kingfisher also flew in front of shoveler
hide and perched on one of the fence post in the left hand corner of the
lagoon. It made a couple of unsuccessful
plunges into the water before flying off.
As the afternoon progressed we
moved of to dunlin hide on lagoon four to few the gulls. Dave and I scanned the gulls but could find
nothing unusual but Dave did find a Peregrine perched on one of the
islands. Matthew joined us in the hide
and after a short while announced that there was a first-winter Mediterranean
Gull towards the right hand end of the gulls.
Quick scan and I was able to have good views of this first year bird.
As we continued looking
through the gulls I found what I thought was a second-winter Caspian Gull and
Matthew then said he had found a second-winter Caspian, which was the same
bird. We eventually found another second-winter
and an adult.
I also found a couple of adult
Yellow-legged Gulls but by 17:00 in rapidly fading light there was still no
sign of the Azorean Yellow-legged Gull so we departed.
On the walk back to car park
we saw a pipistrelle bat.
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