Dave and Roger had been to
Harrington Airfield in Northamptonshire on Thursday this week and had seen a
Great Grey Shrike and a Black Redstart.
The Great Grey was still there yesterday and so Dave and I set off to hopefully
see it. Dave advised me that it had been
difficult and he had and Roger had only seen it briefly. When we arrived there were several other cars
in the lay-by, which were hopefully other birders. As we walked to the first bunker we could see
a group of birders that appeared to be looking at something and on joining them
we found it was the shrike. It was
perched on the edge of a bush and appeared to be sheltering out of the
wind. We were able to scope the bird and
watched it for perhaps thirty minutes before we moved off to see if we could
find a reported Ring Ouzel but there was no sign today.
We went from Harrington to Eye
Brook Reservoir where we found seven Whooper Swans, two Little Egrets and a Red
Kite but the hoped for Little Owl was not visible in the old oak.
We moved onto Rutland Water
and initially went to the north arm where Dave found the three Black-necked
Grebes just of the now exposed spit. The
ten Barnacle Geese were visible on the north shore and we also found three
Pintail and a female Red-crested Pochard.
A Dunlin flew over with a party of Lapwing, two Red Kites and two
Buzzard were observed over Burley Wood and a Sparrowhawk flew over along the
southern shore. As we drove down the
road we had a couple of Grey Wagtails by the cottage, which are not that
regular at the reservoir.
With little else visible we
moved off to the Egleton Reserve and whilst having lunch a party of nine
Redwing flew over. Ken had now joined us
and after lunch we walked to shoveler hide on lagoon three. We counted eighteen Pintail and found a
single drake Scaup but although the water was quite low there appeared to be
little else. After seeing a Redshank
briefly on one of the islands we decided to go to buzzard hide where we had a Green
Sandpiper. We had been watching a couple
of distant Red Kite when a birder entered the hide and asked if we had seen the
Bittern as apparently it had flown right across the lagoon. So much for showing an interest in Red Kites. Dave decided to return to the centre but Ken
and I decided to stay to see if the Bittern flew back but of course in
didn’t. We did have a Shelduck, may
first for some time here and a Curlew fly over but nothing else.
Little Egret on lagoon three
Little Egret over lagoon three
Little Egret on lagoon three
Female Gadwall over lagoon three
Pintail on lagoon three
Pintail on lagoon three
Shoveler on lagoon three
On getting back to the centre
we had not missed to much and all we saw was a single Snip and circa ten
dropping onto lagoon two.
We returned via Eye Brook
Reservoir where we saw a couple of Little Egrets and this time the Little Owl
did obliged and was visible in the Old Oak.
No comments:
Post a Comment