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

Dave, Roger and I started off in the Egleton car park where we were hoping to see the Hawfinch. Ken was already there but there was no sign of the Hawfinch so I wandered through the overflow car park to look over the meadows where I saw four Siskin. Dave then shouted that he had the Hawfinch and both he and Roger had seen it fly in. We watched for about twenty minutes and finally decided to go to Whitwell were we hoped to find the Great Northern Diver.

Female Hawfinch in the EGleton car park

We spent quite some time looking for the Great Northern Diver at Whitwell without success and all we had for our efforts was a Treecreeper close to where we had parked the car.

We decided to go to the dam and look for the diver from there and as we turned onto the main road to head to the dam I saw three birds perched at the top of a silver birch, Waxwing. These were my first for Rutland Water but they didn’t stay for long as Ken and Malcolm failed to see them a few minutes later.

At the dam there were four female Goosanders and a nice adult Yellow-legged Gull but still no sign of the diver and we had no better luck from Normanton where we did find a male Mandarin. Needless to say the diver was seen during the morning from Whitwell and it always surprises me how elusive these large birds can be.

Canada Goose near the church at Normantn

We called at the Lyndon Reserve next where we had four Tree Sparrows, a single Little Egret an a Kingfisher but little else of note so we returned to the Egleton car park. After signing in at the centre we set off to gadwall hide. A Green Woodpecker was observed as walked past the wet meadow area but on reaching gadwall we had seen little else. From gadwall there were plenty of Goldeneye and Great Crested Grebe and a few other wildfowl but there was no sign of any Black-necked or Slavonian Grebes that had been reported in south arm three during the last couple of days.

We called at robin hide on Lax Hill where there was plenty of activity at the feeders, the best being a female Great Spotted Woodpecker and two Nuthatches.

Ken and I looked for Curlew near goldeneye hide as we walked back to the centre and saw three, which we then saw from snipe hide on lagoon one. There was also two male and female Goosander visible on lagoon one.

Drake Gadwall from gadwall hide

Female Goldeneye from gadwall hide

Female Great Spotted Woodpecker from robin hide

Male Blackbird from robin hide

Blue Tit from robin hide

Nuthatch from robin hide

Linnet near lagoon one

After some lunch we went to lagoon three were there was a Water Rail performing quite well and we found three red-headed Smew on the water. The Ruff present for some time now was still present and there was also six Redshanks. I then picked up a gull flying away and identified it as a first-winter Glaucous Gull, which appeared to come down on lagoon four.

We moved off to dunlin hide on lagoon four but there was no sign of the Glaucous Gull but we did have a first and second-winter Caspian Gulls and there was also four Shelduck. The gulls continued to build but as the light began to fade there was still no sign of the Glaucous and we decided to call it a day and walked back to Egleton car park.

It had been a good day’s birding in some quite nice weather with seventy-six species recorded.