Hard work!

Recent weeks have been rather quiet on the bird front close to home. We've been in that in-between stage between autumn and winter. The abnormally mild weather for this time of year is also maybe also having an impact.

Grimsbury Reservoir has certainly become very hard work and new birds for the year have rather dried up! There has been the odd thing to keep us interested though, the best of which being a lovely 1st winter/female Black Redstart (below) around the water treatment works, found by Gareth on Saturday 31/10.

The gulls there have been a decent lure with good numbers of 'biguns' regularly about. These have brought several sightings of Yellow-Legged Gulls (below), as well as a nice 2nd-winter Mediterranean Gull in the early evening gloom of Saturday 07/11.

I haven't been out birding too much elsewhere, but Gareth & I did make pay visits to Boddington Reservoir, Borough Hill & Daventry Reservoir on Sunday 25/10 without finding too much of note. Boddington held a Willow Tit in the usual areas around Byfield Pool. Borough Hill was pretty devoid of birds full stop, while Daventry Reservoir was full of birds but not too many scarcities. The best being 2 Green Sandpiper, 2 female Goosander & around 150 Golden Plovers.

It shouldn't be too long nowbefore the weather turns more wintery, which in turn will hopefully spice up the local birding a little!