Roger picked me up just before
07:00 and after picking up David we headed to Market Harborough for Malcolm,
who was the driver for the day. Our
first target today was a Little Bunting at Great Barford in Bedfordshire, which
has been present for some time.
We arrived on site it was
bright and sunny and with little wind it felt quite pleasant as we walked to
the site, alongside the Great Ouse river and found several birders observing
the birds favoured location after a short walk.
I was expecting there to be some set aside but the field was ploughed
right up to the edge of the woodland and we found out that it had been ploughed
yesterday. The local birders had put
plenty of seed down in the area but after two hours the Little Bunting hadn’t
shown and we had seen just a few Reed Buntings, where there had been thirty
plus during the week. Whilst we were
waiting for the Little Bunting a flock of Barnacle Geese flew over, which must
have contained at least 150 birds and apparently, there were now up to 500
birds locally, which had developed from a few released birds, collected from
the Solway. We also had a couple of
Red-legged Partridge, a Little Egret, a Red Kite and two Buzzards.
Red-legged Partridge
Red-legged Partridge
Disappointed that we hadn’t
seen the Little Bunting we headed for Little Paxton in the hope of seeing a
female Ring-necked Duck. Like the Little
Bunting the Ring-necked had been present for quite some time on the New
Workings and had been reported this morning and we were quite optimistic it
would be there.
The New Workings are near
Diddington, which is a further north than Paxton Pits Nature Reserve but will
eventually become part of the reserve.
The pit was only viewable from a footpath that runs north and then east
alongside the pit.
The path is some distance away
from the pit viewing from the west but does get closer walking along the
northern section. When we arrived, we
viewed the pit from the western section and found a party of Tufted Ducks that
contained a single Goldeneye but there was no sign of the target bird. We continued scanning but weren't having much
success, when another birder who had been along the northern footpath said he
hadn’t been able to find the Ring-necked Duck.
He also informed us that the pit we were looking at wasn’t the New
Workings pit and that the more distant pit was.
After considering our options we decided to have lunch before attempting
to reach the far pit.
Another birder had arrived
whilst we were having lunch who informed us that the near pit was in fact the
New Workings pit and where the Ring-necked was normal seen. After lunch, we
viewed the pit again from the western path and found a flock of circa sixty
Pochard, which did contain a few Tufted Ducks but we couldn't locate the
Ring-necked and to make matters worse the flock moved out of site behind some
woodland. We decided to walk around the
path to view the birds from the north but when we got into position the birds
were much further away and the light was awful and the bird were almost just
silhouettes and we eventually returned to try again from the west. The light was now much better and although we
could easily pick out the Pochard and Tufted Duck there was no sign of the
Ring-necked.
As Grafham Water wasn’t too
far away we went to the dam to look for a wintering Great Northern Diver but
had no joy and so went to the Mander car park to view a different section of
the reservoir. There was still no sign
of any diver but there were more birds to the west, mainly Goldeneye and Great
Crested Grebe but we did find four Pintail and a few Teal and Mallard.
The day was rapidly going from
bad to worse with no target birds seen and as I final attempt to save the day
we went to Eyebrook Reservoir to look for a Bittern that had been present this
morning.
We made a couple of stops
along the Leicestershire shore of the reservoir without seeing too much and
then continued along the road to check the old oak and found one of the Little
Owls before returning to the bridge and hopefully the Bittern. Phil was at the bridge and informed us that
the Bittern had shown well up to about 14:00 but hadn’t been seen since, which
was about ninety minutes. We stayed on
the bridge until just after 16:30 but with no further sightings we called it a
day. As we spent most of time at
Eyebrook Reservoir on the bridge we hadn’t seen a great deal but did see a
Little Egret along the stream, a Curlew in flight and small party of winter
thrushes that contained both Fieldfare and Redwing.
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