Ring Necked Duck

This week has seen some horrendous weather with gales and days and days of rain. Today was a rare chance to experience some sunshine so, after doing a couple of things I headed to Whistley Wood for a tramp around there to see what I could find. Sadly it was really really quiet other than a couple of large Tit flocks.

So with nothing outrageous around the county the temptation to catch up with the drake

Ring Necked Duck at Eyebrook Resevoir got the better of me!

I arrived around lunchtime to find the water levels unsurprisingly pretty high. I searched the northern end without success, despite having a good sift through loads of Tufties. I did however see another large group of birds on the far side of the resevoir (eastern side). So I drove back round, parked up and headed down the track down the eastern side. It wasn't long before I came across a nice group of Siskins feeding in some alders.

I soon arrived by the flock of Tufties nice and close in to shore. An initial scan revealed nothing however a second scan unearthed the handsome drake Ring Necked Duck with the sun lighting up the yank beautifully.

After enjoying great views of the bird I headed back, although not before I had a look through a second flock of ducks nearby. Amongst them was the reported 1st-winter female Scaup showing nicely in the fading light.

Waxys!

Waxwings were now spread wide across the country and this week Northants turned up several including a small and extremely mobile bunch in the Sixfields area.
On Saturday I tried in vein to catch up with them both in the glamorous surroundings of Homebase Car Park and around Stortons GP.
So come Sunday, (18/11) Dave and I set out to finally catch up with the handsome little chaps.

We headed along the path between the river the the large lake, seeing large numbers of finches, including several Siskin and around 10 Lesser Redpoll.
It wasn't long before Dave picked up a flock of 'Starling-like' birds in the distance. They headed straight for us and it wasn't too long before it became clear they were Waxwings, but far more than had been reported. They landed in a large tree close to the car park (where several had also been seen the day before) and showed nicely with the sun behind us for around 20 minutes, with the flock totalling 25 birds. They then headed off back from where they came, towards town.

Despite hanging around a little longer they failed to reappear. We had to be content with more great views of several Lesser Redpolls.

  














After this we headed on to Harrington Airfield. The site failed to turn up anything of any note other than a couple of calling Crossbill from a nearby pine belt and 4-5 Brambling feeding on seed at the start of the concrete track.

We headed onto Pitsford where a Great White Egret had been kicking around for a while. These don't tend to get the pulses racing these days with several long-staying birds over the last few years. They are however pretty stunning looking beasts so it was well worth going to have a look at it. It wasn't too long before we found it sat in a tree not too far from the mouth of the Holcot Bay, visable from the Causeway.

We finished the day at Blueberry Farm, Maidwell to see what we could muster. Despite the heavy disturbance of two dirt bikers, we saw 1-2 hunting Barn Owls showing really well, as well as a brief encounter with a Short Eared Owl flying along a hedge towards us in the fading light.