WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE!

 

I arrived at NDC at 0830 in the hope that I had read the weather forecast correctly and that the rain will have been blown through by the strong wind and sunny intervals would be the order of the day.

I was a bit too optimistic, but I was not on my own as Stuart Rapson(@RapsonStuart on X) had a similar idea. Stuart was sat in the Geoff Smith hide when I arrived. I had tried to walk down the path to the Garganey hide, but the path was under water. Having worn wellingtons all day Sunday at Blacktoft, I had decided not to wear them today.

From the hide we could just see the top of Garganey hide, as the rest was under water. It was difficult to work out where the river was and where the reserve boundary was.

On my previous visits the wildfowl were on Bubwith Ings, but not when I first arrived. A pair of little grebes were on the scrape, looking for food at the shallow edges

 Lapwings and starling were standing on some of the few bits of land and vegetation sticking out of the water.

The taller parts of a hedge were also visible and perched in these were fieldfare, reed bunting and stonechats. Marsh harriers would hover over these bushes looking for prey.

 2 red kites were also looking for food on the other side of the river, where a field edge was exposed.

A great white egret flew past and then landed out of view behind a bush!. It did move into view but soon flew down to the far end of the reserve. A few wildfowl did fly onto the reserve and we were able to add pintail, shoveler, mallard, wigeon and teal to our list.

Stuart spotted a group of golden eye, feeding on the other side of the river, and a short while later he saw 4 more birds fly in, including a male.

Stuart left about lunchtime and I remained until about 2pm. The only birds I saw that Stuart missed were about 50 red legged partridges in a field on the other side of the river. I was not sure if they had all gathered there because of the flooding, or if they had been released as part of a shoot!

A very pleasant morning with Stuart and a day list of 43 birds.