Ton up at St. Aidans

 The Easter weekend weather forecast does not look good, so I decided to make the most of the afternoon sunshine. Fairburn Ings was my first stop.

This is where the cormorants are nesting

On the other side of the trees the grey herons and spoonbills are nesting. The spoonbills are tick number 98. On to St. Aidans. This was very busy. Lots of cars parked on the grass verge and not many spaces in the car park. After a friendly chat with the member of staff on duty I set off down the hill. I was hoping to get some better shots of the black necked grebes. I met two birders who were well organised as they had brought their own fold up chairs! I asked them if they had seen any garganey, to which the reply was no.

They did however point out this wheatear to me. Tick number 99, what was going to be 100?

They both had cameras and told me that they could not find any black necked grebes. Whilst I found that a bit strange as 16 had been reported, given the number of people on the reserve, I would not be surprised if the birds were hiding in the reeds. I carried on walking but did not see any grebes where I had seen them on my last visit. This goldfinch was resting in a hole in a gorse bush.

At the next path junction I turned right and came across another birder who was sat on one of the seats watching a black necked grebe, but it was some distance away. I carried on walking and came across another pair of grebes, but they were very close to the reeds.

This blurrred shot was the best I could do so I walked on a bit more and found another pair. These were also near the reeds and I was looking into the sun.

slightly better photos than the other day.

Plenty of spring flowers on show

I then set off to walk back to the car and on the way got tick number 100.

my first meadow pipit of the year. This male tufted duck was looking very smart.

My original plan was to leave the camera in the car and take my telescope and walk the around the other part of he reserve to try to find garganey and slavonian grebe. However I had already walked 4 miles and there were lots of people about so I decided to drive to North Duffield for my final stop of the day.

It was just after 1630 when I sat down in the hide. There were sounds of gunfire coming from the direction of the farm but I could not see what was happening. Most of the birds were on the opposite side of the water to the farm, which made viewing easier. Several whooper swans were swimming about and looked a bit agitated.

After a while they took to the air, however instead of flying away from the hide they flew downstream, so they were not heading for I celand.

a few minutes later some mute swans flew in the same direction.

difficult to say if it was the noise of the guns that caused them to leave.

Still a lot of wigeon on the reserve and a pair of pintail. The water level is slowly going down so it is not as easy to see the birds feeding in the grass. A few curlew and 2 oystercatchers, 3 redshank and 10 dunlin. No little ringed plover or birds of prey. A pleasant end to good afternoons birding.