Friday 14 January 2011

Recurvirostra Returns

No sign of the Bewick's swan this morning, even though I was there at 07:45 when it was still very gloomy, they may have left early, or perhaps moved on now things have warmed up.

At the Ivy North hide the bittern was showing well and a Cetti's warbler calling loudly, there was also a group of over a hundred teal, many displaying.

At the Woodland hide I found out why the small feeder near the hide was emptying so quickly, the cause was grey and furry.
I waited until the afternoon to go out to do a count of lakes nearest to the water treatment works, in theory the rain was to have ceased, but somehow that did not stop me having to shelter. The biggest surprise was the return of the avocet (Recurvirostra avocetta), I had thought that it had realised that it should be on the coast when it disappeared at the start of the week. Inland records are few and I suspect that this is the same bird as seen at the start of December as well as earlier this week. I did get one very poor record shot of the bird, unusually surrounded by goosander, not a species they would encounter much normally, although it was with almost 75 of them today.Rockford Lake remains much the most densely occupied, I counted 310 gadwall, 838 wigeon, 558 coot and 97 mute swan. There was also a good range of species with a few goldeneye, a goosander and the same 2 smew as yesterday, again they were in the north-east part of the lake just north of the pub on the eastern shore of the lake.

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