RCP

While ‘bioblitzing’ at MVCP on Saturday I bumped in to a pretty scruffy drake Red-crested Pochard.  He was a real crowd pleaser for all those present on my bird walk late afternoon with everyone keeping tabs on where he went.  Otherwise fairly quiet during the day, with other highlights mostly being breeding stuff – confirmed Common Terns, Lesser Black-backs, and the only breeding Black-headed Gulls in the county this year.  Also found a female Pochard with four ducklings on my way out of the site, which was nice.

What next I wonder?

'Grinning!

I've taken my time to get one of these on the SFYL and wasn't finding a tickable one at my usual haunts. So good to find one flying to a pylon south of Duloe. Still need it for my house list, less than a mile away.

Big and purple

Well bloomin’ heck!  I was only showing Darren the vismig potential of the Boughton End picnic site when I glanced over at Broggy.  And there it was flapping down the lake – a big cinnamon brown bird with blackish wing-tips.

“There’s a heron flying over Broggy – sh!t!  It’s a Purple Heron!!”

Even at the distance we were viewing from (and only using bins) we could easily see it was orange. Luckily it was flying below the horizon as if had gone in to the clouds we would probably have been none the wiser.

It flew down the lake to the southern end, before starting to circle.  Unfortunately, it was drifting away from us and was getting harder and harder to see against the trees in the background.  We both eventually lost it and phoned a few people in case it dropped in to anywhere local.

Totally unexpected and totally awesome.  That is never a bird I expected to get on my SFYL this year!

Night time noseying about

I went into a couple of reedbed areas in the brick pits after dark friday night. It was something I had meant to do for a couple of years but with mouth-watering SFY ticks possible such as Savis and Spotted Crake, it was long overdue and I will probably go in again later in the month.  Needless to say I did not get this pair but an estimated four pairs of squealing Water Rails were actually SF ticks for the year as my normal search places in the south in winter were both too dry to hold any of them. One pit had a singing Nightingale continuously for an hour and Barn and Tawny Owls also heard. Now I am wondering what was that heron sp. that I flushed from the reeds in the early hours of this morning ?