Monday, 7 May 2012
Black-necked Spotted Turtle Gropper
After bumping in to three wonderful Black-necked Grebes at Dereks the other day, I thought I'd spend today looking for more regular migrants. First off I tried Tempsford for Spotted Flycatchers and soon found a male singing and zooming around looking for a suitable nest site. Next I thought I'd try Waterloo Thorns for Turtle Dove. After a few minutes looking at various spots unsuccessfully I'd just got back to my car pondering what to do next. A minute later and the loud buzzing of a Gropper piped up - SFYL tick number two for the day. After spending a few minutes trying to photograph it I looked up to see a dove heading towards me - as I raised my bins I could see it was gloriously multicoloured - Turtle Dove. Bingo! It was obviously belting north at speed, but my heart sank as I realised they're getting harder and harder to find locally.
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Shocking to see SCB resorting to these tactics while I was away trying to sneak at Groppa past the committee when this bird was beautifully detailed in my message a few days ago... Clearly the Turtle is fine but a shame it couldn't have had the decency to be there when I had the groppa!
ReplyDeleteYes, but I had two Groppers - the reeling male was chasing a female around the bushes. Also got a recording of it going a weird Cetti's-like 'Chick'!
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