Patching at the 'soap-dish', or Grimsbury Reservoir, Banbury is always pretty hard work, particularly this year with seemingly endless periods of bugger all! However, it's convenient and very occasionally something half decent turns up! The last week/10 days has seen far happier times, with a handful of decent birds. The pinnacle was an exciting find on the morning of Tuesday 22/08, with a group of 4 Common Scoters appearing out of the early morning mist. These were my 131st species for the patch and a bird I have always hoped to find here. So, understandably, I was pretty chuffed!
Monday (21/08) also proved to be a decent day with me finally connecting with my first Grimbo Redstart of the year, as well as an impressive SEVEN Wheatear. There was a real sense of things 'on the move' with several Yellow Wags heading south and a steady trickle of Swifts through too.
Gulls have been in relative short supply so far this July/August compared to the previous couple of years. But on Friday (18/08), it was good to see a smart juvenile Med Gull, pretty much the only gull on the reservoir during it's brief half hour stay, before circling off high to the NE.
Hopefully, these are all the start of a bit more happening at the patch over the coming few weeks!
On Saturday (19/08), Em and I decided to have a day out to North Norfolk, as well to meet up with friends Kieran & Leila and their cute little daughter Nahla. After a torturous drive, discovering that the Oundle to Peterborough was closed for roadworks, we eventually make it to the North Norfolk coast. We had a wander around Wells for a bit and then drove further E along the coast, pausing at Stiffkey Flood which is looking fab for waders at the moment. Birds here included 41 Black-Tailed Godwit, 5-6 Greenshank and a Green Sand. A walk around Cley was followed up with a great catch-up over lunch at the Dun Cow, Salthouse with Kieran & Leila. Kieran and I had a bit of a look for the Glossy Ibis close to Salthouse duck pond. Somehow, we failed to connect with the bloody thing but as a small consolation, we had fabulous views of a juvenile Yellow-Legged Gull feeding around the duck pond.
After spending a bit more time with them with headed off back along the coast. Before we left Norfolk, we decided to go for a big evening walk up to the beach at Titchwell. The light was stunning and the freshmarsh had plenty of waders to enjoy including particularly good numbers of Black-Tailed Godwit, Ruff & Dunlin.
Highlights were 3 Spoonbill (unsurprisingly asleep most of the time we were there!), at least 20 Med Gulls, a decent flock of Barwits, a Yellow Wagtail, and a couple of Sandwich Terns.
On then to the beach, where it was pretty breezy but stunning, as the sun became lower and lower in the sky. We spent a while here, enjoying quite a few Sanderling putting on a great show, coming quite close if you stood still and were patient.
There were several moulting Barwits strutting around, together with a few approachable Turnstones. A couple of Little Terns flew past too and a juvenile Med Gull put in a brief appearance.
It began to get quite chilly and so we slowly made our way back to the car and hit the road home. A wicked day out!
I spent quite a bit of time in the Northampton area across the 12/08 & 13/08 weekend, so I found some time to have a blast at a few sites I haven't been to for a while. On Saturday (12/08) afternoon, I popped into Harrington Airfield for a walk in the hope of finding a few passerines or perhaps a Clouded Yellow. Unfortunately, I saw neither, with very few birds about. Butterfly-wise there were a few Brown Argus, Common Blues, Peacocks, Small Tortoiseshells & a Small Heath. Best thing I saw there was probably a Stoat scuttling about along the old runway.
I followed this up with a visit to Pitsford Reservoir, north of the causeway. This proved to be pretty decent. From the Scaldwell Bay's Bird Club Hide there was a sizable flock of 29 Black Tailed Godwits, a mixture of adults and juveniles and a nice find. Also present were 2 juvenile Garganey, 2 Great White Egret (1 Scaldwell Bay, 1 Walgrave Bay), 4 Green Sand, 1 Common Sand, 2 Yellow-Legged Gulls & 2 GBBGs.
Sunday (13/08) was a beautiful sunny one. Dan Watson and I spent the day touring quite a number of sites throughout Northants, in the vain hope we may actually find something. It was good fun and we came away with a few decent birds. We started off at Ravensthorpe Reservoir and located 3 Green & 2 Common Sand. Nearby Hollowell Reservoir produced for me, the highlight of the day with an Osprey cruising about for about 10 minutes before drifting off. Also here were a very approachable juvenile Dunlin and 3 juvenile LRPs.
A drive further along the A5199 brought us to Naseby Reservoir, a new site for me. It actually looked pretty decent. There were a few fishermen about, but also lots of muddy, fishermen-free shoreline too. There were 5 Green Sands present, as well as 2-3 Yellow Wagtail and a Garden Warbler in with a tit-flock. Nearby Welford Reservoir was pretty quiet, other than a couple of Common Sands. We had planned to go to Stanford Res, however with time pressing, we decided instead to head to Pitsford Reservoir, north of the causeway. The Black Tailed Godwits in the Scaldwell Bay had decreased to just 6 birds, while there were also the 2 Great White Egrets, a juvenile Greenshank, 3 Green Sands and a Snipe.
A visit to Summer Leys afterwards was short-lived, with the site drastically overgrown and very little shoreline (and any birds of note) on offer. So to complete our day, we paid an early evening visit to Clifford Hill GPs. Both reported male & female Redstarts showed intermittently along the 'Chat hotspot' of the Hardingstone Dyke. Also along here was a very fresh, surprise juvenile Stonechat (below). The highlight here though, was undoubtedly Dan's reaction to finding the escaped female Bufflehead, losing his mind thinking he'd found a true mega!!
There were lots of gulls about. We had a good look through to see if we could pick out the earlier reported adult Caspian Gull. Best we could find though were 3 Yellow-Legged Gulls and that, was the end of that!
