David and I decided to make a
visit to Stanford Reservoir after the heavy morning rain had moved off to the southeast,
but it remained quite windy but there were some sunny periods.
After parking near the old
railway line, we walked along the track and entered the reservoir grounds near
the feeding station. We had seen a
Buzzard and couple of Bullfinches as we walked along the track and on entering
the reservoir grounds I found a single Tree Sparrow in a bush near the feeding
station. It was particularly windy at
this point and the feeders were swinging quite violently in the wind with no
birds feeding.
There is a set-aside field to
the northeast and we entered the field and flushed a Snipe and a second smaller
bird that we thought was a Jack Snipe.
It had flown directly away from us before dropping into the field again,
so we walked to where we thought it had gone.
It flushed again and this time we saw it slightly better and were able
to confirm that it was a Jack Snipe.
We returned to the reservoir
grounds and walked back along the track to the road. There were good numbers of wildfowl along the
Leicestershire bank that included Wigeon; Gadwall; Teal; Mallard, three
Shoveler, forty-two Pochard, Tufted Duck and a single female Goosander. There were also twenty Cormorant and two
Little Egrets were observed in flight.
When we got back to the road
we checked out the small section of the other side of the road, where we found
two more Bullfinch. There was a large
concentration of Jackdaw on the Leicestershire side that all took to flight and
shortly afterwards I picked up a Buzzard, which had presumably caused the
disturbance.
After getting back to the car
David suggested we go back via Saddington Reservoir and just after passing
through Mowsley we had a Kestrel and I then saw a Sparrowhawk, which David
failed to see.
There wasn’t a great deal at
Saddington Reservoir even though the water was quite low with the best being
two male and five female Goosander.
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