Slow times

With just some Yellow-legged Gulls to add over the summer, my next SFYT was this morning.  Catching up with a first winter period miss - 2 Pintails at Radwell during my WeBS count.

Pinned!

At last, a new SFYT. Female Pintail playing hide and seek with 200 Wigeon on GLW, Broom.

Canada... or Leighton Buzzard

Always nice to get Pintail on a Bedfordshire self-found year list. Did not get one on the duck hunt this weekend but fortunately had found this male at Grovebury previous weekend on my first bird finding trip of the year when I was actually looking for gulls coming into roost. Managed this record shot of the bird with Canadas and a presumed feral Ross's Goose suggesting a Nearctic scene rather than Beds. Good luck to all this years SFYLers!

MR and PT

Scored a couple more with SCB this lunchtime. A f Marsh Harrier over Broom and an eclipse drake pintail at GLE. Steve trying here to phonescope a flying raptor...

Bedfordshire ZC100 Club

I am usually rubbish at waterbirds.

The first person to mention that the w, a, t, e and r in the statement above are superfluous, is going to get a punch in the face....although you would probably have a valid point.

I am rubbish at waterbirds because the nearest decent bodies of water are about a four mile walk away. But since I gave up smoking six months ago, the trek down to the Ivel or Tetworth is no more onerous than a walk in the park. ;-)

My 100th zero-carbon tick this morning with a smart drake Pintail at a fog-bound DWE Pits. As I mentioned in my post to the message group, I am pleased that it wasn't something more challenging.

I expect to score higher in the wader and wildfowl categories this year, but will still probably come in around last place.

Atb,

D

Pintail at Myers Farm Reservoir, Potton

''Rubbish little farm reservoir on county border pulls in another good bird shocker.''

It isn't really rubbish, it kind of resembles a mini-GLE, but about the size of a six-a-side football pitch and with lots of exposed mud.

Following a Shoveler here (another site first) on 19 August, this morning at dawn a female Pintail was present - by far my earliest date in the county. I think a lot of stuff gets pushed off the fishing lakes just over the border at Little Heath, Gamlingay. Hence, some mornings, there can be reasonably high numbers of wildfowl and on others, nothing at all.

Tuesday's Greenshank was still present and there are now two Green Sandpipers. Not bad really...

ATB,

DOM

Nailed some Pins.

A slightly late WeBS count from Wyboston because I can't raise them on the phone to get access.  I resorted to viewing from across the river from Little Barford - not the best view but reckon I can see about 70% of the water and probably 90% of the birds.  Well, it came up trumps with some wonderful Pintail and a calling Little Owl.  Add these to the Oystercatcher and I'm past 90 species - still lagging behind a bit though.

As for photography - despite owning a nice big Blain-style scope now, I'm still pushing out my usual standard of 'record' shot.  And excuses - long distance and 4pm tonight...

 The View

 The Pinners

Roxy Oyc

Dabbling in dabblers

Decided to have a poke around the brick pits to see whether any of the mass of Garganey from the Washes had found their way into Beds with our first arriving winter ducks. Did not get a garg but a dabbler was Beds self year ticked none the less when I found this Pintail lurking in Quest Pit, looked most like a young bird.
Maintaining the quality of record shots on this blog... here it is,