Early morning at NDC.

 Car sharing at the moment so decided to make the most of the good weather this morning with an early morning visit to North Duffield  Carrs. I arrived at 7am and as I was walking along the path towards the Geoff Smith hide, I saw a barn owl fly across the field to my right and land on a fence post about 6 feet in front of me, Unusually I had my camera in a bag and by the time that I had got it out the owl had flown off. I quietly entered the hide and the barn owl was at on a post to the left of the hide. By the time that I had put my bag etc down the bird had flown. I was sorry that I could not get a photo, but it was my first barn owl of this year, tick number 135.

I decided to walk down to the bottom hide. The recent rain had increased the amount of water still on the reserve.

There were plenty of  swans feeding  in the vegetation and I started to look at them one by one to see if they were mute or whooper swans. The first few were mutes and then I saw a black swan. I then saw a pair of great crested grebes and then a drake garganey. I continued to check the swans when I noticed some disturbance. A marsh harrier was hunting over the reserve, which disturbed a lot of the small birds.

A cuckoo was calling and came very close to the hide but I could not see it. A curlew was calling and flew over the top of the hide. In front of the hide a sedge warbler was flying back and forth collecting food. It then perched in a bush for a while and started to sing.

I had to switch to manual to get this photo as the camera just wanted to get photos of the bush!

Lots of swifts, swallows, sand and house martins flying quite high as they hunted the insects.

I then decided to walk back to the first hide. On my way I saw these red legged partridges in  a field

and then several hares.

When I got to the hide Alan Whitehead was in the hide with Bud, and I spent a very pleasant hour with them before I had to leave for home.

 A whitethroat was singing from a hawthorn bush

a blackcap was perched on a branch in the tree next to the hide but I was unable to get a picture of it. The cuckoo came close again but only perched briefly before flying off again. A very pleasant 4 hours and 46 different birds.