Rod's Birding: A day at Rutland Water, Rutland

I was helping out with the wildfowl count today and started in south arm three. It was blustery on the north shore, which is pretty exposed and with choppy water it wasn’t easy counting. The wildfowl numbers begin to increase during August and I counted over 500 Tufted Ducks and plenty of Mute Swans and Great Crested Grebes. There were smaller numbers of Mallard and I had two Gadwall and a single Pochard. There was five Little Egrets on the far shore and although the water level is now falling and there is a muddy edge there were no waders. A Red Kite was observed close to the Old Hall but there was nothing else of note.

Having completed the count in the south arm I moved to Dunlin hide on lagoon four on the Egleton Reserve. There were about fifty Teal but other than a few Mallard and couple of Shelduck and an odd Tufted Duck there was little else except for plenty of Greylag and Canada Geese. I did find six Little Ringed Plovers, five Ringed Plovers, a Dunlin and a Common Sandpiper and counted over 150 Lapwings and there were three Ospreys over Burley Wood. I moved on to sandpiper to try and get a better view of the waders but they were keeping low in the vegetation but I did count forty-four Common Terns on island ten spit. I finally moved to plover hide on lagoon four to complete the count but added just a few Mallard and I assumed a Common Sandpiper was the one I had seen earlier.

Having completed my count duties I moved to shoveler hide on lagoon three where the water is now quite high. There were circa twenty Swift over the woodland along the northern shore and plenty of Sand Martins but I found nothing unusual amongst the numerous wildfowl. As I was scanning I picked up three waders flying over the water and immediately identified them as Turnstones. They flew around several times before heading off towards lagoon four and disappearing behind the bund. With nothing else of note I went back to sandpiper hide on lagoon four to try and locate the Turnstone. There was no sign of the Turnstone but I did manage to increase the Ringed Plover count to eleven. On my way back to the centre I called at grebe and redshank hides on lagoon two and found two Green Sandpipers from both of them.

After some lunch I handed in my count figures and spent some time looking over lagoon one from both the centre and mallard hide but there was no sign of the Pintail Terry had seen earlier but I did find a Little Ringed Plover, Ringed Plover and Common Sandpiper. I eventually went back to dunlin hide on lagoon four to view the gulls. There were plenty of Black-headed Gulls on the lagoon and quite a few Great Black-backed Gulls on the area to the left of the hide. Scanning through the gulls to the left I found nine Yellow-legged Gulls, including a moulting juvenile and there were a few Common and Lesser Black Backs as well as a single Herring Gull. I then located a much paler juvenile that was about the same size as a Lesser Black-backed Gull. Its head was pear-shaped and looked rather small and it was rather full breasted with the belly drooping behind the legs. It was rather long-winged and also appeared to be long-legged. I suspected that it was in fact a juvenile Caspian Gull but it had flown off before Steve arrived to confirm my identity. There were now fourteen Ringed Plovers, two Dunlin, a juvenile Ruff and a Snipe flew over.