The Highs and Lows of county birding

Well the Easter weekend had arrived and it was time to get out there and hopefully see some good birds. Thursday evening saw 2 Common Cranes appear in the north of the county in fields close to Thorpe Waterville. So after a very, very early start Dave and I headed straight there only to miss them by literally 30 seconds, with them heading high and east, never to be seen again!! Was a tad gut wrenching to say the least but hey, you gotta take the rough with the smooth I suppose!

After this we headed to Stanwick GPs to hopefully console ourselves by seeing the Green Winged Teal that had been there all week and the other bird I was hoping to catch up with. However, the rather sombre mood continued with no sign of the bird after giving the reserve a thorough search. There wasn't actually too much about, with best birds being a fly-through Curlew, a Little Owl, several Redshank and a couple of Grey Wagtail.

After a consoling McDonalds, we decided to give the nearby floodwater at Irthlingborough a go as it looked good and held an Avocet last week. It quickly came apparent there was a lot of birds here and the encouraging sign of great numbers of Teal had us quickly scanning through them. Low and behold it wasn't long before Dave gave the shout, 'It's here!!!'. Phewww the day was saved, the smart Green Winged Teal dabbling around in the company of a female-type Teal at medium distance. Being on higher ground, gave us good, constant views rather than the rather hit & miss views people were getting at Stanwick. Brilliant stuff!

Everyone soon came and saw it before we eventually headed off to Summer Leys/Earls Barton GPs, via a stop off for Coffee. We checked out Mill Lake without anything much to report. Summer Leys wasn't much better with the highlight being a Tufted Duck X Pochard with Pochard close to the Feeding Station. Rubbish shot of it below: