Black Redstart & Boddington

A great surprise back on Monday (10/10) was the presence of a female/1st-winter male Black Redstart at Grimsbury Reservoir. Found late morning and only an hour before I headed down there during my lunch. It was doing a feeding circuit around the water treatment works at the SW edge of the reservoir. Sadly I didn't have the camera with me but enjoyed great views all the same. Everytime I've walked past the place, my head says "there just has to be a Black Redstart there some day," so it was good to see my hunch became reality!

The next day I headed back there again, this time with camera in tow. Thankfully the bird was still present and showed really well again. The light was shite, but actually I ended up with a pretty decent set of shots.

Haven't had the chance to get out too much recently however have been over to Boddington Reservoir a couple of times. Finding stuff there is hard work but it does have some great habitat & is certainly worth persevering with. Last Sunday (09/11) the weather was awesome early on, being perfectly still with bright sun. Best birds were a showy pair of Willow Tit (below), a couple of Lesser Redpoll, a Kingfisher and best of all a late fly-over Rock Pipit calling away, a belated county tick! Wildfowl there are generally rather thin on the ground so a small group consisting of 2 Pochard, 2 Tufties & a male Wigeon was pretty noteworthy.

On (Sunday 16/11) I had a look at the gull roost at Boddington. There were the usual good numbers of Black Headed & Common with smaller numbers of Lesser Black Backs, c.5 Herring & a very dapper adult Yellow Legged Gull. Very little else about other than a couple of resident Tree Sparrows.