A morning at Rutland Water, Rutland - September 10, 2017

I was at Rutland Water today to help with the WeBS count and Chris and I were assigned South Arm Three and Lagoon One.  We left the Volunteer Training Centre after a coffee to begin the count in the south arm.  As we parked at the bottom of the lane it was clear that there were plenty of hirundines and when we got out of the car they all appeared to be House Martins but we did have a single Swift fly over.

We walked out to towards the Old Hall to begin the count but there wasn’t too much in the small bay and we walked back along the shore to view the rest of the area.  There were plenty of Tufted Duck and Chris counted 1526 and other birds counted were thirty-two Mute Swan, two Egyptian Geese, eight Gadwall, a Teal, four Mallard, a Pochard, five Cormorant, four Little Egret, a Great White Egret, seven Grey Heron, 134 Great Crested Grebe and a Moorhen.

There was also a Black Tern feeding towards Lapwing Hide and I saw a Common Sandpiper briefly as it disappeared around the end of the spit but we couldn't relocate it.  An Osprey was observed towards Lagoon Three and a Hobby was seen near the Old Hall.  Hirundines were everywhere, mostly House Martin but also a reasonable number of Sand Martin but surprisingly no Swallows.  Whilst it is impossible to count such flocks I wouldn’t have been surprised if there wasn’t close to a thousand birds involved and by far the most I have seen in recent years.

Having completed the count in the south arm we drove close to harrier hide with the intention of going to Fieldfare Hide to ensure that there was nothing tucked away in the bay.  Chis heard a Golden Plover call on a couple of occasions and I picked two birds up heading north-west before we walked to Fieldfare Hide.

On reaching the hide Chris found a Green Sandpiper tucked in the corner and then a second bird with it but the only other addition was three Little Grebes.  A juvenile Marsh Harrier appeared over Brown’s Island just before we walked back to Harrier Hide to start the Wet Meadow and Lagoon One counts.

Looking west over the Wet Meadow from Harrier Hide produced nothing other than two Great White Egrets flying over and so we focussed our attention on Lagoon One.  We had seen the Great White Egrets fly off with one heading for the new lagoons and the other coming down towards Mallard Hide and we were therefore confident that another perched on a post directly in front of the hide was a third bird.  We then counted what we thought we wouldn’t see from the centre before driving back and parking near Snipe Hide.  It was surprising to find the flash totally devoid of birds, which gave us a final count of zero for the Wet Meadow.

Once back at the centre we went up to the viewing area to finish counting Lagoon One.  There were a couple of Ruff and a Greenshank and we counted three Mute Swan, thirty-four Greylag Geese, seventy Canada Geese, two Shelduck, sixteen Gadwall, twenty-four Teal, forty Mallard, twenty-one Shoveler, sixty-nine Tufted Duck, 333 Cormorant, two Great Crested Grebe, five Moorhen, twenty Coot and fifty-three Lapwing.

Chris called Lloyd who had seen five Great White Egrets on the new lagoons and with two still visible on Lagoon One it is possible that as many as seven may now be present.