A morning in Northwest Leicestershire - June 8, 2018

My wife and daughter were having a day out in London today and I was responsible for ensuring my youngest granddaughter got to school on time.  After dropping her off I decided to have some time in Northwest Leicestershire and headed for Kelham Bridge, where I was hoping I might catch up with a Willow Tit.

I retraced my steps back to the main path but found that it was like a quagmire just a few meters along the path making it impossible to reach the second hide without going around in the opposite direction and having to complete almost two circuits and so I decided to go back to the car, seeing three Eurasian Reed Warblers and hearing another three.  On reaching the car I headed for Blackbrook Reservoir.

The path down to the bridge that overlooks the reservoir at Blackbrook can be quite wet but was quite dry making the quagmire at Kelham Bridge even more surprising.  There was a Willow Warbler singing along with two Blackcaps as I walked towards the bridge and on reaching the bridge I found my target, a Mandarin Duck.  It was a female and she was escorting a brood of five.  The reservoir was quite low and there were a couple of Grey Herons and a single Little Egret feeding along the margins.

My next site was Swithland Wood and I parked facing a tree stump where there was seed for the birds.  I arrived just after 11:00 and spent close to thirty minutes watching the birds come down for the seed.  Perhaps the most surprising were two Stock Doves but there were also two Great Spotted Woodpeckers, two Eurasian Jay, two Coal Tits a Eurasian Blue Tit, a Great Tit, two Eurasian Nuthatches, three Common Blackbirds, a European Robin and two Common Chaffinch.

Following a very pleasant thirty minutes I drove the short distance to Swithland Reservoir, where I found the southern section covered in blanket weed with few birds in evidence and so I drove around to the northern section, where I had my lunch.  I saw very little whilst on site with a Little Egret, three Common Buzzard and a Eurasian Jay being the best and I was on my way home by 13:15.