A day in Leicestershire & Rutland - November 25, 2014

I headed straight to Rutland Water this morning seeing a Red Kite near Tugby, a Buzzard near Manton and eight Fieldfare near Great Glen.

When I arrived in the Egleton car park there was clearly some thicker fog over lagoon one and so I set off down the service road to Buzzard hide on lagoon three.  The juvenile Red-necked Grebe had been seen quite close to the hide on several occasions on Saturday and I was hoping for a repeat performance today.  I found the Red-necked Grebe almost straight away but it was some distance off behind the nesting platforms before it swam with a Great Crested Grebe out of sight.  I waited quite some time but it failed to reappear again and seeing very little else I moved on to crake hide where there was a single Little Egret and a Sparrowhawk flew out of the bushes and flew off over lagoon three.  I continued on to Lapwing hide where there two quite large rafts of wildfowl, which were mainly Wigeon, Tufted Duck and Coot.  The light was pretty poor due to the mist and the sun trying to break through and so I made my way back to Smew hide where I found five Pintail on lagoon two.  I went back into Buzzard hide but there was still no sign of the Red-necked Grebe and so I went into Shoveler hide and eventually found near the centre of the lagoon as it preened and moved slowly to the left.  I had scanned the water quite a few times and was surprised that I hadn’t seen it before considering where it now was.

Female Shoveler on lagoon three

Drake Pochard over lagoon three

I called at sandpiper hide on lagoon four where the water is now very high but other than a couple of Shelduck and a few Shoveler there was little else and so I went back to the centre.

I had brief views of a Marsh Tit near grebe hide whilst I was scanning the alders for Siskin but only finding Goldfinches.  On reaching the centre there were two male and three female Goosanders near the long island and I counted twenty-seven Pintail as well as seeing six Curlew feeding on the meadow.

After some lunch I went to the north arm where I saw both Great White Egrets, along with twenty-three Little Egrets, and a Black-necked Grebe and counted another eighteen Pintail.

Steve had seen the Long-tailed Duck from Teal hide at Lyndon and so I drove around to the Lyndon Reserve and walked the short distance to Teal hide but was I unable to locate the Long-tailed Duck although I did find another Black-necked Grebe and there were fourteen Dunlin at the base of Lax Hill and an adult Yellow-legged Gull just off the island.  There was also seven Tree Sparrows and a Marsh Tit at the feeding station.

I called briefly at Eyebrook Reservoir on route home where I saw four Shelduck, four Red Kites over the fields and two Fieldfare flew over.  I also saw another two Buzzards, one near Cranoe and the other near Kibworth on route home.