David, Roger and I left
David’s and headed to Corby to pick Ken up before we headed for Long Drove at
Ouse Fen in Cambridgeshire. We had
several Red Kites between Market Harbour and Thrapston and a single Buzzard and
arrived at Long Drove around 09:00.
There had been an American Golden Plover present yesterday with some
1500 Golden Plover and we were hoping to connect with it today.
The drove wasn’t suitable
drive along and so we parked at the junction and then walked down the length of
the drove to view a field at the far end.
There were Golden Plover in the field, but we probably had no more than
300 during our visit and unfortunately the American Golden Plover wasn’t with
them. A Dotterel had been seen earlier
but there was no sign of that either, although there were plenty of birds
feeding in the field. These included
c.300 Golden Plover, Lapwing, seventeen Ruff, several Stock Dove, a Jay,
several Skylarks, a Fieldfare, a Redwing and some Linnets. Other birds of note seen during our stay
included two Egyptian Geese, eight Pochard, a Cormorant, a Grey Heron, three
Little Grebe, two Marsh Harriers, two Buzzards, three Kestrel, circa ten more
Fieldfare and a Stonechat.
Stonechat
The Golden Plover were quite
restless during the stay, frequently flying around and all the birds did the
same on several occasions and eventually they all seemed to depart and so we
then went back to the car for lunch.
We then had some discussion as
to go back in the hope it might American Golden Plover may come back in the
afternoon but thankfully we decided to go to the Nene Washes as the American
Golden Plover wasn’t reported all-day.
It was about a fifty-minutes’
drive to the Nene Washes and we went to March Farmers first. There wasn’t a great deal, but we did have a
Marsh Harrier, a Buzzard, two Kestrel and seven Snipe.
As we made our way back to the
car Roger noticed a party of swans in a distant field and on scoping them we
could see that at least some were Whoopers.
We managed to park almost opposite them along the main road and were
satisfied that all those we could see clearly were Whoopers and that there were
at least thirty-five. We had seen a
Kestrel as we left March Farmers and another along with a Marsh Harrier before
we turned to Eldernell.
The car park was empty when we
arrived and as there wasn’t any shelter from the wind it felt a little
uninviting but thankfully the wind wasn’t too cold. We hadn’t been out the car long when Ken
indicated he had found a couple of Cranes and when we looked there were two
adults and an immature. We remained for
about ninety minutes if which time we saw two Red Kites, two Marsh Harriers,
two Buzzard and four Kestrel and circa seventy Golden Plover flew over. There were several small parties of Whooper
Swans flying west along the wash and I counted ninety-nine in total. One group of two adults and four juveniles
landed briefly in front of us before flying off over our heads to the south.
Four adult Whooper Swan
Family party of Whooper Swan
Family party of Whooper Swan
Family party of Whooper Swan
Family party of Whooper Swan
Two juvenile Whooper Swans
We left Eldernell and headed
west towards Oundle but found the road was still closed and had to divert
towards the A47 and the cut across country to get back to Ken’s. Other than a few more Red Kites we didn’t see
much else and after dropping Ken off we headed back home.
It had been disappointing not
seeing the American Golden Plover but we still had some nice birds with the
Cranes being the highlight.
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