Roger and I started off at
Newton Harcourt Church where we had a Coal Tit, two Nuthatches and a
Treecreeper. A Red Kite was observed
just east of Blaston as we made our way to Eye Brook Reservoir.
It was rather misty and cold
at Eye Brook Reservoir and the water level was high with no exposed mud. There were plenty of wildfowl, which included
two nice Ruddy Shelduck, but we couldn’t find anything else of note. We did find fourteen Snipe feeding in the
grassy margins and there were three Little Egrets but the mist was making it
difficult to identify the more distant wildfowl.
We visited the north arm at
Rutland Water first where we soon located the three Black-necked Grebes and six
male and three female Red-crested Pochard.
The ten Barnacle Geese were on the northern shore but we could only find
four Egyptian Geese, which have been quite numerous here recently. There were masses of wildfowl, which were
mainly Wigeon but there were also reasonable numbers of Gadwall, Teal, Mallard
and Tufted Duck but I could only find a single Goldeneye. There were two Little Egrets on the shore, a
single Buzzard was observed over Burley Wood and a Redshank flew by.
On reaching the Egleton
Reserve we had a quick look at the feeding station, where I saw a single Marsh
Tit but there were very few birds visiting the feeders. A quick view of lagoon one before lunch
produced very little, twelve Pintail and five Little Egrets being the best.
After lunch we walked to
shoveler hide on lagoon three seeing three Redwing on route but very little
else. On arriving in shoveler hide we
found another male and two female Red-crested Pochard and I counted fourteen
Pintail but there were far fewer wildfowl on the lagoon today. There was no sign of the recent Scaup and the
Tufted Duck number appeared to be well down, which was also reflected in the
north arm. A third-winter Yellow-legged
Gull was observed flying over the bund between lagoon three and south arm three
amongst a party of Black-headed Gulls.
A visit to crake hide produced
another Redshank and better views of the Yellow-legged Gull and a juvenile
Peregrine flew over. It was easy to see
from here how much the water levels had risen, indicating that water was now
being pumped into the reservoir. A
Kingfisher flew by smew hide on lagoon two and ten more Pintail were
observed. It was pretty quiet on lagoon
four and all we saw of interest from sandpiper hide was another twelve Pintail
and an adult Yellow-legged Gull.
We called at both grebe and
redshank hides on lagoon two on the way back to the centre but found nothing
new. From the centre I counted twenty
Pintail on the lagoon and there were five Snipe on one of the islands and six
Curlew were feeding on the meadow to the south.
A Sparrowhawk was observed circling above before it drifted off to the
north.
It had not been an exceptional
day’s birding but as usual there was a good selection of birds, although we
missed a very late Sand Martin over lagoon one.
No comments:
Post a Comment