Recent outings

The weather in recent weeks has been pretty horrendous, with storm after storm ploughing their way across the country, consisting of high winds and torrential rain. As a result, birding has not been a massively enjoyable experience and photo opportunities have been limited.

On a more positive note, I have still managed to catch up with a few nice birds, while there are now plenty of signs that spring is not all that far away. Snowdrops have been out now for a while now, quite a number of daffodils are also emerging and several passerines are in song and holding territory too, with Song Thrushes particularly conspicuous at the moment.

   

















On Sunday (31/01) I headed out with Dan Watson & Gareth Blockley for a bit of a tour of several Warwickshire sites local to Dan. A stomp around looking for Jack Snipe at Lighthorne Quarry was fruitless however we did have as many as 60 Common Snipe.

A visit to farmland near to Barford (just south of Warwick) produced the welcome and increasingly rare sight of large flocks of finches and a few buntings. Here, there were up to 20 Brambling, including the odd cracking male, several Lesser Redpoll and hundreds of Linnets. Sadly no hoped for Corn Bunting though.

'The dump' close-ish to Dan's house failed to reveal any Caspos or white-wingers with best being a 1st-winter Yellow-Legged Gull.

We finished up at Draycote Reservoir for a bit of a bash at the gull roost. We ended up with a really nice selection of birds, though most were distant in very dull, dreary conditions.

The roost itself contained a lovely 1st-winter Caspian Gull & an adult Glaucous Gull in near darkness! Other birds present included a drake Smew, single female-type Scaup & a juvenile Great Northern Diver towards the dam end.

Saturday (06/02) was a virtual write-off with 50mph winds and heavy rain, however I did pop over to Daventry Reservoir to see the recently-found Green Winged Teal to get out of the house. Sadly though I failed to catch up with the bird, only managing to see about 30 Eurasians. Nevermind!

The next day, (Sunday 07/02) I again teamed up with Dan & Gareth, together with Gareth's friend Allan. We had a good look round Otmoor first of all, always an enjoyable place to visit at all times of the year. Shortly after leaving the car park, it was cool to see my first ever tiny Brown Hairstreak butterfly egg nestled on the side of a twig.

Most of the birds were clustered around the 'Big Otmoor' area of the reserve where there were great numbers of Wigeon and Lapwing together with a flock of around 1000 Golden Plover, while a Little Egret put in an appearance from the main hide and we also had a couple of decent views of Marsh Harriers.

We wandered up to the first screen and were treated to further great views of a cream-crown Marsh Harrier both hunting and perched.

Around 3pm we departed to finish the day at Farmoor Reservoir in the hope we may turn up something in the gull roost. Before we began sifting through the gulls we were distracted by the two long-staying juvenile Great Northern Divers which showed well in the SE corner of F1.

Dan managed to find a nice 4th-winter Caspian Gull, which was nice, however other than that there was nothing else of note. Very surprised we didn't manage to locate at least a Med Gull, with 100s of Black Headed Gulls present. Still, fun day out all the same!