I left home in misty
conditions and it wasn’t too long before it started to rain, which it did until
I was almost at Eyebrook Reservoir. As I
approached Eyebrook Reservoir the mist thickened reducing the visibility
significantly and on arrival it began to rain quite hard. I initially went to the Stoke Dry car park,
seeing ten Little Egrets along the stream as I did so. The feeders where back
in the tree and there were a few Blue and Great Tits, several Chaffinch and a single
Yellowhammer whilst I waited for the rain to ease. As the rain eased I drove back to the bridge
where I met Mike and I spent the remainder of the time viewing from the
bridge. The feeders here produced Blue
and Great Tits again and a single Great Spotted Woodpecker also made a
visit. As we stood on the bridge the
visibility improved and I picked up ten Golden Plover in flight, a Kingfisher
flew along the stream and landed on its favoured perch and there was a single
Tree Sparrow in the bushes. As the fog
began to clear I agreed to meet Mike in the Egleton car park at Rutland Water
and that we would then head for Whitwell to look for the divers.
Not surprisingly there was no
sign of the Little Owl in the old oak as I left Eyebrook Reservoir and as I
climbed the hill heading towards Uppingham it became quite foggy. The fog was still quite thick on reaching the
Egleton car park and so I agreed to see Mike in the Bird Watching centre after
I had made a brief visit to the Volunteer Training Centre.
Mike was still in the car park
when I returned and with no improvement in the visibility we walked down to the
centre to try and view lagoon one. From
the viewing gallery we could just make out the long island and could see very
few birds, the best being a few Pintail quite close to the centre. It wasn’t long before we agreed it would
perhaps be best to go to Shoveler Hide on Lagoon Three hoping the fog might
clear.
We checked the feeders near
the centre before setting off where there were a few Blue Tits and single Great
and a Coal Tits, along with several Pheasants and Moorhens feeding under the
feeders.
As we headed off towards
Lagoon Three we had a Great Spotted Woodpecker and a Jay near Badger Hide and
there were quite a few common passerines, including a few Redwings between the
centre and Redshank Hide but we saw little between there and Shoveler Hide
except for another Great Spotted Woodpecker.
When we opened the flaps on
the hide we could barely make out the reedbed to the left but there was a
single Green Sandpiper closer and we eventually made out another two and five
Redshanks slightly further away. There
were quite a few Teal feeding on the area of exposed mud and at one point we
counted eight Snipe, which were my first on site in over a month. A Goldcrest moved through the reeds in front
of the hide but other than a single Shoveler we saw nothing else of note and
with no sign of the fog lifting, we headed back for lunch.
Goldcrest from Shoveler Hide
As we were having lunch the
fog lifted considerable and on returning the centre we could see the whole
lagoon reasonably well. I counted
eight-five Pintail and there were also Wigeon, Gadwall, Teal, Mallard, Shoveler,
Pochard and Tufted Duck. I picked up one
of the Great White Egret on the Wet Meadow but with little else we went back
towards the northern lagoons.
The visibility was now much
better and we saw a Sparrowhawk on route and on reaching Dunlin Hide on Lagoon
Four we were able to see the whole lagoon.
There were forty Golden Plover and fourteen Dunlin amongst the near
flock of Lapwing and another forty Golden Plovers further back and a fifteenth
Dunlin on another island. David had seen
a couple of Caspian Gulls yesterday but initially all we could find were the
five commoner gulls until I picked up a white-headed bird amongst them. With a south easterly wind the gulls were
mainly being seen head-on, which didn’t make identification easy. The white-headed gull was clearly quite a
large adult and after watching it for some time we identified it as a
Yellow-legged Gull based on the head and bill shape and pale iris. Another white-headed bird found a little later
insisted on hiding behind Lesser and Great Black-backed Gulls and although it
initially looked like a possible Caspian we eventually agreed that it was in
fact a Lesser Black-backed Gull, which we confirmed as we had several brief
views of the dark mantle.
We returned to Shoveler Hide
hoping to get better views of the waders and anything else on the lagoon but
found that some of the volunteers had ventured out onto the lagoon meadow and
there were now very few birds on the mud other than a single Green Sandpiper
and two Redshanks. There were nineteen
Pochard, including six males, feeding on the lagoon before they flew off
towards Lagoon Four and we eventually called it a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment