"Armchair" SFYL tick

It's not over yet folks - nearly spat my coffee over the kitchen window this morning when I looked out and saw these. I'm glad I did a mad dash for the camera, as they were seen off soon after by a Fieldfare guarding a stash of fallen apples.

Jim

Last orders?

No podium position for me again but a nice quality addition to my SFYL with a Smew found while visiting Cuckoo Bridge Lake for WeBS.  Worth pointing out virtually no one else goes birding here and WeBS is the excuse I need to visit.  Over the years I've had Great Northern Diver, Pintail twice, Scaup three times and Great White Egret.  Not bad for a quiet site.

Merlin

After a good view of the phalarope I thought it best to check out GLE in case everybody else had overlooked it. Good job I did, picked up this bird on the deck first right at the back of the pit, then chased by Kestrel, then back on the deck again at almost the same spot before the Kestrel chased it away again. Was very small compared with the female Kestrel so consider most likely a young male.

Smooth as Velvet

Two or three times a month, with the odd extra during migration season I take the short lunchtime trip from my Letchworth office to stroll across the field and scan over the Blue Lagoon at Arlesey just in case. Having seen Velvet at Broom on Tuesday, I thought immediately that I ought to pop into the lagoon the next day as I had not been yet in November. So there I was on Wednesday, more in hope than expectation with my bins. Not much on there as usual but Boom !

(Photo taken Thursday as did not have camera on Wed)

Wild

In as many weeks, another quality self-o with two Bewick's Swans at Broom.

Duck tick

Long time coming but these Common Scoters were a bit of welcome selfing quality.

Poaching

That's how I feel going "out of area", away from my usual haunts. After spending all morning trying to kick off a heavy cold by (not) finding a Shrike, I decided to give Stewartby and Brogborough a look, more out of curiosity than anything else. I believe the technical term for birds of interest on Stewartby is "bugger all", so didn't know what to expect at Brogborough, however even from the car on the way in it was evident that the place was covered in ducks.

There were probably about 500 Tufted and a couple of hundred Pochard resting fairly close together and the prospect of going through them all didn't exactly fill me with joy, so I went for my standard (lazy) approach in situations like this - anything good will be on the edges. Luckily, a fairly quick search found 2 female Goldeneye on the edge of the main raft, that then started chasing each other about, so job done. I reckon it would be a safe bet for one of you dedicated types to find something better amongst the main bunch but I really couldn't be bothered with the way I was feeling.

Jim