Xmas decorations etc are put away for another 10 months or so and so a chance for some birding. I decided to stay local, so as to maximise the hours of daylight, plus I needed to get some walking in if I am to achieve 70 miles a month.
This was the view from the Tower hide at Wheldrake at 9am.
I last visited the reserve on December 30th and there were more birds present then. Perhaps the cold weather has caused some of them to move on. There were several military planes flying about which drowned out the sound of the birds.
Lapwings were standing on the ice at one edge of the water, while on the grass on the other side, curlew, ruff, and golden plover were with the lapwings feeding.
Not many birds on the pool hide. A few goldeneye busy feeding, but no tufted ducks or swans.
A lot of frost on the boardwalk and no sign of the dusky warbler.
The sun was shining when I got to Swantail hide, but it soon clouded over.
A pair of goldeneye were present along with several gadwall, but no sign of any smew. A female stonechat was flying from fence post to fence post. No sign of any greylag geese or white fronts.
Lots of wigeon, a few shoveler and pintail and even fewer tufted ducks. As I left the hide a red kite drifted overhead. I met several people as I walked back to the car. They all asked me if I had seen the dusky warbler. Good luck to them if they were going to stand about in the cold wind. I also had to ask one chap to put his dog on a lead and then take it off the reserve. It does say no dogs on the reserve sign, but it is not in very large lettering.
26 birds on my day/year list, so I decided to go to North Duffield Carrs.
Much more water than my last visit, but not many birds. A few wigeon were standing on the bund, as were a pair of mute swans. No whooper swans to be seen, have they all left the valley?
Two marsh harriers were hunting over the reserve and disturbed the teal, lapwing and golden plovers. After one disturbance a black tailed godwit joined the lapwings feeding on the grass. A buzzard was hovering near the river bank and a single redshank flew onto the bund. Then more disturbance,
a peregrine flew over the water in front of the hide
After a couple of hours I decided to go and have a look at Bubwith Ings. There was a lot of water there and possibly more birds.
Lots of wigeon, a few greylags, but once again no swans. It was now after 1pm so I decided to try for the shrike near Wistow, I had just parked my car when Ian, a fellow volunteer at Blacktoft turned up. He gave me a lift the short distance down the road to where other birders were waiting in the hope of seeing the shrike. The bird had not been seen for a while but a mistle thrush was a new bird for my list. Malcolm then turned up and he had a drive around but did not see the bird, so I left about 4pm as the sun was starting to set.
One of the many fieldfares we saw,
Scarborough on Friday, so the change to add to my 45 birds for the year, plus getting a few more miles in.
No comments:
Post a Comment