David and I set off for
Prior’s Coppice in the hope of finding a Woodcock, which had been reported
several times over the last few weeks. David
had been on Thursday but hadn’t found any but one was seen after he left, and
he was hoping for better luck today.
When we arrived in the car
park it was rather misty and overcast and the westerly breeze was beginning to
increase slightly. We walked along the
main track before taking another track off to the right and then walking into
the wood. We spent seventy-five minutes
on site but had no luck with Woodcock and saw very little else with two Marsh
Tit and a Nuthatch being the best.
I called Roger to see if he
was out and found he was at Rutland Water looking for the Black-necked Grebe
from Barnsdale without success and was heading to look from the end of Tim’s
road. We considered going to Leighfield
but with the mist still being quite thick we didn’t think it would be worthwhile
and went to Rutland Water to join Roger.
When we arrived, he was with
Briand and Roger and had seen the Black-necked Grebe, which was considerably
closer than when I had seen it on Tuesday.
There appeared to be far fewer birds in the arm today, but I did find
four Pintail along the north shore and there were four Redshank in the corner
of the south bay. I then noticed two drake Goosander, which were joined by a
female in the fishponds and Roger found a Golden Plover amongst the Lapwing,
but there was very little else, so we went to Old Hall to look for the
Red-necked Grebe.
There was no sign of the
Red-necked Grebe, although it was seen later but there were
plenty of birds in South Arm Three, which were mainly Coot, but we couldn’t
find anything of note.
With no joy with the grebe we
went to the Egleton Reserve and after parking went to the centre. There was plenty of activity at the feeding
station but with nothing unusual, so we went to the viewing area in the centre,
where Roger joined us. There were eight
Shelduck, sixty-two Pintail and four Goosander on the lagoon and a female-type
Marsh Harrier was observed hunting over the Wet Meadow and the rear edges of
the lagoon. A Red Kite was also seen
over the Wet Meadow, a Great White Egret flew over and headed off to the north
and another single Golden Plover was found amongst the Lapwing on the long
island. David then found a red-headed
Smew on Lagoon Two and shortly afterwards Roger thought he had seen a male and
on looking in the area we had two drakes and two red-heads.
We went back to the car for
lunch and afterwards walked to the northern lagoons, seeing circa eighty Golden
Plover over the large meadow area. We
went to Shoveler Hide on Lagoon Three were there was a nice flock of twenty-one
Red-crested Pochard and another five Pintail.
A Great White Egret flew in with a Little Egret, which were presumably
the birds we had seen earlier on Lagoon One but then a second Great White Egret
flew in and both disappeared into the reedbed area.
A received a tweet concerning
the American Wigeon being back on Lagoon Two and so I went to try and find it,
whilst David went to look on Lagoon four from Sandpiper Hide. I opened the flaps in Osprey Hide and soon
located the American Wigeon on the far side of the lagoon and pointed it out to
Roger when he joined me in the hide.
David then arrived saying he had seen a first-winter male Smew on Lagoon
Four but nothing else. Two other birds
then came into the hide and we alerted them to the American Wigeon, which was surprise
for them. It had been two weeks since I
last saw the American Wigeon and it hadn’t been reported anywhere for over a
week. The work on Lapwing Hide and the
recent bad weather had shifted most of the birds of the reserve and there had
been just one report of the American Wigeon since then and it was feared it
might have moved on, but it is likely it was still somewhere around the reservoir
and had now returned to its favourite lagoon.
We saw the two drake Smew again but with little else we moved back to
the car park and headed to Eyebrook Reservoir.
There was no sign of a Little
Owl in the old oak, so we continued to the northern coral. There were fifty-three Dunlin and three
Golden Plover near the inlet and a Ruff and a Redshank along the Rutland
shoreline. As we scanned around we found
three Shelduck and eleven Pintail and I found a second Redshank on the
Leicestershire shoreline.
We moved from the northern
coral to the southern section of road to view the gulls. There were plenty of gulls on the water and
in one of the fields, with most being Herring Gulls, with good numbers of Great
Black-backed Gulls and very smaller numbers of both Black-headed and Common
Gulls. There were very few gulls
arriving probably due to the local tips only working during the morning and
with no sign of the first-winter Glaucous Gull we called it a day and headed
home.
The light was fading quite fast
we headed back but we did have a brief view of a Sparrowhawk just as left Tur
Langton.
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