An afternoon in Northwest Leicestershire - November 21, 2015

There was a fresh northwest wind today and there was a light covering of snow on the roofs first thing and noticeably colder than of late.  David had decided he wasn’t going out and Roger and I waited to see if there were any reports locally before venturing out.  There were several reports of Kittiwakes inland but nothing in Leicestershire & Rutland and so we decided to go and see if there was anything on the northwest reservoirs.

Cropston Reservoir was the first site we visited where the water level was quite low.  There were plenty of Cormorants and Great Crested Grebes on the water and the odd Mallard and three Goldeneye and there were plenty of Black-headed Gulls over the water and around the shore but the only other gulls were a few Common and a single Lesser Black-backed.  Roger did locate three Green Sandpipers on the southern shore and there were a few Lapwings at the inlet along with a single Grey Heron.

We stopped on the causeway at Swithland Reservoir where I found a single Pink-footed Goose amongst a small party of Greylags.  As I scanned the south west edge looking for Mandarin Duck I was surprised to suddenly find quite a concentration and counted twenty-eight with most being males.  There was also a good selection of wildfowl in the north east corner that included Wigeon, Gadwall, Teal and Shoveler.  Feeling we had exhausted the southern section we drove around to Kinchley Lane to view the northern section from the dam.  Initially there appeared to be very little but something disturbed the birds, which was a large brownish looking falcon.  We watched as it flew over the water and up over the quarry where it was mobbed by a male Peregrine but we still unsure of the identity of the larger bird, which was probably a juvenile female Peregrine but we couldn’t rule out a hybrid of some kind.  As we looked back towards the viaduct there were more birds on the water and Roger noticed that one of the swans was a Whooper and shortly afterwards found a female Scaup amongst a party of Goldeneye.  He then found four Dunlin on the shore, which are quite unusual at this site with my last sighting being a single bird in September 2011.

Our final port of call was Cossington Meadows where we were hoping to see a Short-eared Owl.  We hadn’t been there many minutes when I found one quartering one of the meadows.  We walked further along the path and eventually had some excellent views of two birds that performed rather well for most of the time we were on site.

Short-eared Owls