Hen harrier at North Duffield

 I think that today is likely to be my last day of bird watching this year. The weather in York was awful this morning, so I decided to drive to North Duffield Carrs. On the A64 the line of traffic queuing to  get onto the A19 must have been about 2 miles long, so I decided to go to North Cave and visit North Duffield on the way home.

As you can see from the picture the weather was not brilliant but at last it had stopped raining. Tufted ducks, mallards, teal, coots, a moorhen and a little grebe were on the lagoon in front of the South hide.

More birds on view from Crosslands hide. As I walked up the slope to the hide, a birder was standing under the porch and told me that he had seen two peregrines hunting over the reserve.

I went inside and could see that there were more birds on this lagoon than on the south lagoon. Lots of wigeon, a few shoveler, a single black tailed godwit, a few pochard and lots of gadwall.

I have seen shoveler feeding together in a group but this was the first time that I had seen gadwall doing it. After a while the chap outside shouted that the peregrine was out hunting again, so I went outside to watch it. The lapwings soon flew off and shortly afterwards I left and drove to North Duffield.

There are lots of road signs  informing drivers of vans and HGV's that Bubwith Bridge is closed for them . When I got to the bridge I could see why, there is very little room to drive through. This did not deter a driver of a tipper truck just managing to squeeze through.

A few birders in the hides, including Mark in the Geoff Smith hide. The large herd of whooper swans was way over by Aughton Church. No birds on the scrape, but plenty of lapwings, wigeon, gadwall, shoveler and tufted duck along with at least 10 smart looking male pintails. Mark had also been at North Cave but had driven to North Duffield after seeing a report of a hen harrier. Just before I left the hide he managed to locate it in the distance near the farm.