A pre organised meet up with Mike again,saw us having a very welcome cuppa and bacon sarnie before we began our walk(Thanks Mike)and some nice Siskins entertaining us near the car park,it was a very relaxed start to proceedings.
The previous few days had seen a Red head Smew and a drake Green-winged Teal being the star birds here,so that is what we concentrated our efforts in looking for.
The Teal were in very good numbers,but unfortunately were well spread all around the reserve,so to start the GW Teal was difficult to find.
We began our walk scanning all the water bodies looking for the star birds,with no luck,but gaining some nice views of the local wildfowl,with excellent numbers of Teal and smaller numbers of Gadwall,Wigeon and Tufties.
A party of 3 Oystercatcher were signs of the coming spring months and were great to see as they noisily called to each other.
We came across one of the feeding stations which had some good numbers visiting it,which included at least 10 Tree Sparrow and a cracking male Brambling.The latter was a proper beauty and was the first i had seen since the autumn at Spurn.Other visitors to the feeders included a huge Brown Rat which kept flushing all the birds every time he appeared,but was great to see all the same and added something different to the visit.
Eventually we got a message that the Drake Green-winged Teal had been seen on the main lake,so that is where we headed.
After arriving in the hide there he was dozing,like all wildfowl like to do for 80% of the time,but the diagnostic,white vertical line on the sides of the breast could be seen well.He did turn his body so the less visible,white scapular line could be seen and we did manage to see his head on a couple of occasions also when he briefly woke up,showing the less well defined gold edges to the green facial area.
Also seen while watching this diminutive american duck,was a distant Red Kite along an adjacent hillside,which was nice to see also and unfortunately we never did see the Smew.
So after a very welcome visit and great few hours out and about with Mike at this excellent little reserve i headed back to North Linc's to catch up on some sleep,seeing another Red Kite over South Cave.
 |
| Male Siskin near the car park. |
 |
| Male House Sparrow. |
 |
| Brown Rat at the feeding station. |
 |
| Male Brambling at the feeding station. |
 |
| Distant record shot of the sleeping Green-winged Teal. |
No comments:
Post a Comment