Had a day looking round Northants today with Dave. Started off at Harrington Airfield early doors. We headed along the concrete road and it wasn't long before a Merlin flashed across the field between us and the bunkers, putting up a single Golden Plover which proceeded to fly around calling. We suddenly realised the Merlin (a female) had in fact perched up on wires and showed well but distantly for a few minutes, fanning it's tail right out. Managed to get a distant silhouette photo below.
There were birds everywhere especially Finches & Buntings, these included a smart female Brambling picked up on call before showing nicely yet briefly. There were also several Redwing kicking around and a few Siskins over in ones & twos.
We then heard the news of several Bearded Tits at Stortons GPs so we swiftly headed there. We failed to latch onto them with an increasingly stiff breeze keeping them quiet. We did though hear 1-2 squealing Water Rail and 1-2 Cetti's Warbler in song.
Next we headed to Barnes Meadow NR to have a tramp around the wet meadows for Jack Snipe. We did flush a handful of Snipe and there was also a Little Egret but zero Jacks.
This was followed by a brief tramp around Summer Leys which produced absolutely nothing, in fact sadly the reserve seemed to have more people than birds!
We completed the day with a visit to the dam at Pitsford. It wasn't long before we got onto the Black Necked Grebe that has now been there well over a month. It showed amazing well close in at the northern end of the dam with Coots and several Little Grebe.
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