With things being quiet
locally Ken, Roger and I decided to go to Frampton Marsh in Lincolnshire which
is one of the few reliable sites, these days, for Turtle Doves.
When we arrived the car park
was almost full as there was a special event taking place that involved the
unfailing of a new sculpture. We therefore
decided to walk
to the reservoir in the hope
of finding a Turtle Dove. When we
reached the clearing along the path a scan of the wet meadow produced a drake
Wigeon, drake Garganey, twelve Black-tailed Godwits and several Little
Egrets. There was also at least three
Reed Warblers singing from the nearby reeds.
As we approached the end of the first part of the footpath we heard a
Turtle Dove singing but it flew out of a silver birch as we approached. We were now able to scan the open fields and
I picked up three Turtle Doves flying over the field and we watched as they
headed towards the reservoir before turning back over the field and
disappearing. We continued on to the
reservoir and then walked a little further out towards the marsh to view the
hedge. We saw two Turtle Doves flying
around and briefly perching in the dead trees on several occasions and then
three, presumably the same as we had seen earlier, flew along the hedge and
beyond the reservoir but we continued to see the other two, making five in
total. We went back to the car park for
lunch seeing a couple of Reed Warblers at the gap and hearing a Sedge Warbler
as we neared the road.
Swallow
Swallow
Yellowhammer
On reaching the car we drove
to the end of the road to the old car park for some lunch and to view the wet
meadows. We soon found two of the three
reported Curlew Sandpipers both of which were in summer plumage with one
looking particularly stunning. They were
feeding with a small group of nice summer plumage Dunlin and several Ringed
Plovers. A Little Ringed Plover dropped
on the drier area on the other side of the road before flying around calling
and disappearing. When we had finished
our lunch we walked to the sea wall where we had a better view of the marsh and
could also see the salt marsh. We soon
relocated the party of Dunlin containing the Curlew Sandpipers and we also counted
nine Brent Geese and I found a single Pink-footed Goose. The salt marsh was very quiet except for a
few Redshanks but Roger then found four Ringed Plovers and as we scanned we
found another five.
We went back the visitors
centre but other than the reported Mediterranean Gulls we had seen most of what
was present. We spent a short while
scanning the islands for the Mediterranean Gulls but were unsuccessful but
there was a pair of Avocet quite close with three tiny young. When we walked back to the car park two other
birders informed us they had heard the reported Quail calling and so we walked
back along the track towards the reservoir hoping we might hear it. We gave it about twenty minutes before we had
to leave but without success.
Despite not hearing the Quail
we had seen two of our target birds, Curlew Sandpiper and Turtle Dove and were
quite satisfied with the visit and a surprise on the way home was a Barn Owl
perched alongside the A151.
Dakota FZ692 ‘Kwicherbichen’ over the marsh
Dakota FZ692 ‘Kwicherbichen over the marsh
No comments:
Post a Comment