Roger and I had decided to
visit Boultham Mere in Lincoln where there has been three juvenile Blue-winged
Teal since the 21st. We had a
pretty good run in getting to the area but then had problems parking, as one
area threatened a hefty fine and the other by the old Super Bowl felt rather
remote with three rather suspicious characters already parked there. We eventually parked in Farmfoods car park
after gaining permission to park there and then walked towards the mere along a
dirt road. We had gone about half a mile
when I realised I had left my binoculars in the car. I returned to the car to
get them and rejoined Roger near the footbridge over the drainage ditch. We continued along the path on the other side
and noticed a set of steps leading into the reserve and we presumed the hide
and so we continued only to reach a dead end.
It wasn’t going to well at this stage and so we returned to the steps
and walked past the hide to find the viewing point near the seat. There were other birders present who informed
us that the birds had been there but had disappeared down the right-hand side
of the mere which is not visible from the viewing point. There was then a message indicating that they
were visible from the hide and so we
walked back but on entering the hide were told that only one had been seen and
it had gone off to the right and was out of sight. Eventually Roger saw a duck partially visible
through the reeds and it turned out to be one of the Blue-winged Teals but it
swam right and disappeared again. A few
minutes later all three appeared and although quite close the reeds made them
difficult to photograph.
During the next hour we saw
them on several more occasions but they were out of sight more often than not
but I did eventually get some reasonable shots of at least one of them. Two Bitterns also put on a superb show as
they flew around for several minutes, with at least one frequently calling
before dropping back into the reeds.
We eventually called it a day
and headed off towards home.
Juvenile Blue-winged Teal
Juvenile Blue-winged Teal
Bittern over the mere
Bitterns over the Mere
Adult Lesser Black-backed Gull
Roger needed to back by 13:00
but as we still had quite a bit of time we called at Cropston Reservoir. As usual there was very little but we did
fine a male and three female Mandarins on the far shore and there were several
Swallow and a single Sand Martin over the water.
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