Dave, Roger and I set of to
Broomhead Reservoir in South Yorkshire today in the hope of seeing Two-barred
Crossbill. On arrival it was quite foggy
and took quite some time to clear. There
were plenty of birds visible from the roadside, which were mainly Siskin and we
had several small parties of Crossbill fly over but sometimes only hearing
them. As the fog began to clear we were
able to get better views of the Siskin and found a nice male Lesser Redpoll and
a Brambling amongst them and we also had a brief view of a female Common
Crossbill perched on the top of a larch.
Some other birders then
arrived and told us we weren’t in quite the right area. We had suspected this as we had been unable
to locate a feeding area where apparently the birds were being seen. We spent some considerable time in this area
seeing plenty more Siskin and a few Lesser Redpoll and Brambling as well as
three male and a single female Common Crossbill but there was no sign the
Two-barreds.
Nuthatch in bird feeder area
Whilst we were having lunch
another birder told us he had heard a Two-barred further down the road but had
not seen it. We gave it a try after
lunch but without success. We finally
decided to call it a day and head off to Tittesworth Reservoir in Staffordshire
and hopefully a Lesser Scaup.
Our intention was to go via
Strines and pick up Red Grouse for the year but we found the road was closed
and had to divert. We did eventually get
back onto the Strines road and drove back towards the Strines Inn where we
found three Red Grouse.
We had a choice of two routes
to get to Tittesworth and decided to go via Hathersage where we have seen
Dipper fairly reliably in the past but not on our last visit. Today we failed again despite walking a quite
away alongside the river but we did see two male and two female Mandarin Ducks.
We finally arrived at
Tittesworth Reservoir but couldn’t find the Lesser Scaup either. We did see two rather nice male Goosanders, a
couple of Oystercatchers and two more Lesser Redpolls but it had not been a
very successful day, with only two of the target birds seen.
Mallard
Oystercatcher
First-winter Common Gull
First-winter Common Gull
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