I was out today at Rutland
Water where I was meeting up with Mark and Bridget, whom Roger and I had met on
our fast start Heatherlea trip to Scotland.
They brought a friend Sean with them and I met them near the Old Hall as
I was also involved in a wildfowl count.
I arrived at the Old Hall and just as I was getting my gear out of the
cat they pulled up, which was excellent timing.
We walked the short distance
to the water and found an Oystercatcher, five Ringed Plovers and a Common
Sandpiper on the exposed spit at the end of the road. I started my wildfowl count, which was mainly
made up of Mute Swan, Mallard and Tufted Duck but there were also Canada Geese,
Gadwall, Great Crested Grebes and Coot.
There was also six Little Egrets and a second Common Sandpiper was found
further into the south arm.
My next area to count was
Whitwell Creek and then the dam, so we drove and parked Sean’s car on the lane
to the cottage and then drove to Whitwell in one car. There was few wildfowl in the creek, mainly
Mallard and Coot but there was a single Common Tern, Little Grebe and several
Swallows. Again the dam was rather quiet
with a few Mallard and a couple of Little Grebes. There was also a single adult Yellow-legged
Gull and a Common Tern and a single Sand Martin was feeding around pumping
station inlet. There were a lot of
fisherman out on the water and consequently there were just a few Great Crested
Grebes out on the main water and very little along the shoreline.
Normanton produced further
Mallard and another Little Grebe and two Common Terns and two Sand Martin were
also observed.
As Bridget was particularly
keen to see Osprey we continued round to Lyndon and after watching a party of
Tree Sparrows feeding on the feeders we walked to shallow water hide. It was very quiet as we walked along the pat,
although a nice Red Underwing moth provided some interest close to deep water
hide.
Red Underwing
There was a party of birds
foraging in the trees as we walked along from wader scrape hide to shallow
water hide. We saw several Blue and
Great Tits plus a number of Long-tailed Tits and we did find two juvenile
Willow Warblers.
Juvenile Willow Warbler
As we approached shallow water
hide two Osprey rose into the sky and soared around as if to well Bridget
before they settled down again. One an
adult settled on the ‘T’ perch whilst the other, a juvenile, came down on the
nest before flying into a group of trees and disappearing from view. There was a Green Sandpiper in front of the
hide and four Greenshanks were joined briefly by a Curlew. A Yellow Wagtail was also a nice find amongst
the many Pied Wagtails.
As it was approaching mid-day
we walked back to the centre and drove around to the Egleton Reserve, picking
up Sean’s car on route and seeing a Hobby over the fishponds. After some lunch we viewed lagoon one from
the centre where there were two Garganey feeding to the right. There was also three Green Sandpipers and
Bridget then found a Common Sandpiper on one of the close islands.
We finally set of for shoveler
hide on lagoon three and found that the water level was perfect for
waders. There were four Dunlin and
twelve flying over, four Ruff, eleven Snipe, four Black-tailed Godwits and a
three Green Sandpiper, which was a nice selection of waders. As usually there were quite a few Common
Terns feeding over the water and a good raft of duck, which were mainly Tufted
Duck but there were also a few Pochard but there was no sign of the reported
Goldeneye.
Juvenile Ruff
Female Ruff
As we entered crake hide two
Green Sandpipers were noted under the bushes on the far side and three Snipe
flew off. The Green Sandpipers
eventually provided some excellent photo opportunities before the also departed. There appeared t even more duck present in
south arm three than earlier today but most were Tufted Ducks with circa thirty
Gadwall. A distant juvenile Osprey
provided some entertainment as it dived repeatedly into the water, usually from
a low elevation and causing quite a splash before it rose out of the water each
time only to repeat the process. It
seemed unlikely that this technique was likely to bring and success in terms
catching a fish.
Juvenile Green Sandpiper
Juvenile Green Sandpiper
Juvenile Green Sandpiper
Juvenile Green Sandpiper
Juvenile Reed Warbler
Juvenile Reed Warbler
We called at sandpiper hide on
lagoon four where there were eleven Ringed Plovers, a Dunlin, a Green Sandpiper
and a Greenshank. There were also a few
Common Terns resting on the islands and I could ten Yellow-legged Gulls but
there was no sign of the reported Little Gull.
As we couldn’t see all of the gulls we moved to dunlin hide where we
found a juvenile Little Ringed Plover and Mark found the first-summer Little
Gull, which had now lost the ‘W’ mark on the upper wing and was beginning to
resemble a second-winter bird.
We eventually called it a day
and walked back to the car park and said our goodbyes after what had been an
enjoyable days birding.
I called at Eye Brook
Reservoir on route home where I saw a juvenile Shelduck, two more Osprey, two
Snipe and nice adult Yellow Wagtail.
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