I was out with Roger today and
one of the first birds on the year list was a female Blackcap in his
garden. After watching the Blackcap for
a few minutes we set off for Swithland Reservoir in the hope that the two female
Velvet Scoters were still present.
We initially stopped on the
southern causeway were I found a pair of Mandarin resting in the trees on the
western edge of the reservoir. We drove
the short distance to the dam and picked one of the Velvet Scoters up almost
straight away and soon found the second.
We also heard a Raven calling but didn’t see it. A Nuthatch provided some nice views on the
feeder in the house and a Coal Tit also made a brief visit. A Green Woodpecker called on a couple of
occasions, a Treecreeper provided brief views and a Little Egret flew
over. As we were about to leave Roger noticed
that one of the resident Peregrines had returned to their usual tree on the
skyline.
As we were leaving we saw
Roger and Andy Brett who informed us that they had seen Waxwing from the Tesco
car park in Loughborough, so we decided to give them a try.
We parked up in the car park but there was no sign although a Green Woodpecker was
unexpected. I suggested to Roger that we
drove around the area to the west, which is roughly where they had seen
them. As we were driving down Parklands
Drive a party of circa twenty flew over the road and appeared to drop behind
the houses. We parked the car and walked
down a path at the eastern corner of the road.
We soon found about seven of the Waxwing before more flew in and I
eventually counted sixty-six before they started to drop into an apple tree
that had plenty of apples on it. They
eventually flew off and so we left for Rutland Water and saw circa ten on the
central reservation of Terry Yardley Way as we were leaving the town.
Waxwing
On arrival at Rutland Water we
went straight to the fisherman’s car park on the Hambleton Peninsula, where
parking was rather difficult due to the number of people about, but we soon
found the female Long-tailed Duck. From
the end of the Warden’s cottage road we found two male and two female Goosander
in the fishponds and the seven Barnacle Geese on the north shore, where there
were also two Little Egrets and a Red Kite and a Buzzard were observed over
Burley. Malcolm then called me to tell
me about a Slavonian Grebe off the end of the peninsular so off we went. Again there appeared to hundreds of people
and parking was again very difficult. We
walked down to the end and then left through the wood and soon found the
Slavonian Grebe, which provided some reasonable views.
It was now lunchtime so we
went to the Egleton car park and again found parking difficult. I don’t every recall as many people about on
New Year’s day before but obviously the fine weather had brought them out.
We went into the centre and
soon added a Stonechat and Curlew to the year list, the Stonechat being a nice
male.
A walk to lagoon three
produced very little on route but on reaching shoveler hide on lagoon three we
soon added Green Sandpiper and Ruff and eventually found a pair of Red-crested
Pochard and five red-headed Smew.
There was a single Pink-footed
Goose amongst a party of Greylag and Canada Geese in the meadow behind dunlin
hide on lagoon four. There appeared to
be fewer gulls coming into the pre-roost gathering but we did have a single
first-winter Mediterranean Gull and there were also nine Shelduck on the water
and a Peregrine was sat on one of the island.
We finally decided to call it
a day with the year list on seventy-seven, which was nota bad start to the year
that included several good birds.
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