Brief glimpses

 An afternoon birding at North Duffield Carrs.It was pleasant in the sunshine, if you could get out of the wind.

I started out on the Geoff Smith hide. Signs of spring with birds on nests.

a group of 7 tufted ducks were also on the scrape

there were 4 male and three females, wherever the females went including diving for food, they would be followed by at least two males.

After an hour I walked down to the Garganey hide. On the way I heard a chiffchaff and a blackcap, but was unable to locate them. When I entered the hide, Chris, David and Oliver were already there. They told me where the male garganey was, but before I was able to locate it a peregrine started to fly over the water and put a lot of birds to flight. Shovelers, pintails, mallard, teal, wigeon and gadwall all took to air as the peregrine flew back and forth. I ws then able to look for the garganey and managed to locate it in one of the channels to the left of the hide. Too far away for a decent shot.

Chris and Oliver saw a sparrowhawk fly past with a lapwing, as they left they found part of the bird, and David and I continued to watch the birds. David saw a sand martin, but it was too far away for me to find. A few minutes later the peregrine started to fly again. Lots of birds took to the air and the peregrine slowly flew closer to us and turned away about 20 feet from the hide. It then flew across the water and attempted to take a coot. There was a struggle and 2 other coots joined in and the peregrine flew away empty clawed. It landed on the other side of a fence and was lost to view.

I kept getting brief glimpses of the garganey as it swam from one side of the channel to another, my first tick of the day. David then found another sand martin which I managed to locate, tick number 2. A single swan was flying onto the reserve, and David and I were watching so that we could identify it. As we were watching it we both noticed a swallow flying low overthe water, tick number 3.

 Another birder joined us and we were able to tell him where the garganey was. David then left to go to Bank Island, shortly afterwards the other birder left.

I remained for about another hour and then walked back to the Geoff Smith hide. The birds were still on their nests and the male tufted ducks were still following the females. Nothing else happened and I left about 5pm, happy to have seen 39 different birds, 3 of which were new additions to my year list, taking me to 139.