A streaked heron first seen on
July 27th had not been seen again until yesterday evening when it
was identified as an immature Black-crowned Night Heron. Dave and I were unable to go yesterday and so
were hoping we could find it today.
Roger joined us on site and we started walking towards the Stanton end
of the reservoir when a tweet informed us it was still there. We then met Andy Smith who gave us some idea
where it was and we continued around to the north shore and scanned the area to
the right of the boat house. After a few
minutes I found the bird sitting low down and partially hidden in the trees. As we watched it, it moved and eventually
provided some nice if distant views before flying towards the inlet and
disappearing. We walked back to the
small bridge where I found it again stood alongside the stream where it was
feeding. Although it was partially
hidden it was much closer and provided some nice views. It was in fact a first-summer bird and was
showing a dark cap and greyer back, although it still retained streaking on the
underparts.
Black-crowned Night Heron
As we stood with several other
birders on the bridge a Kingfisher flashed by, which was only my second of the
year and was Dave’s and Roger’s first.
We eventually returned to the
car and went to Lockington Gravel Pits.
There were far fewer birds than on my last two visits but we did find
two Little Egrets and a Little Ringed Plover and two Buzzard flew over.
Dave and I then went to
Swithland Reservoir where we had three more Buzzards and four Common Terns and
I recorded my first Purple Hairstreak in the County, seeing three. Cropston Reservoir produced very little,
although three Egyptian Geese were my record in the northwest of the county.
We finally called a Watermead
Country Park South and saw a Buzzard on arrival. It was now very hot but we did see four
Red-crested Pochard, two of which were Leucistic, seven Cormorants and a couple
of Common Terns. There were numerous
Brown Hawkers on the wing, several Banded Demoiselles on the canal and quite a
few Common Blue Damselflies and we also saw a single Blue-tailed Damselfly.
The heat was now becoming
almost unbearable and with no further news of a reported Great White Egret at
Thornton we called it a day.
Leucistic Red-crested Pochard
Banded Demoiselle
No comments:
Post a Comment