Report on the first days' birding
After spending New Year's Eve reading through the Rare Bird Alert and Birdguides pages, and trawling through birding blogs for info, I started the New Year with a list of sites that needed to be visited in the first days of the New Year. It helps that the calendar this year has fallen so that School Term does not start until the 7th.
My year started at Swithland Reservoir in Leicestershire, where two female Velvet Scoter had helpfully decided to spend the winter inland. Mt decision was based on the fact that one can waste hours or days scanning the seas of Norfolk or East Yorkshire, hoping that a Velvet will fly past among the common scoter, and this is one pressure that can be taken off if a bird has decided to winter inland. We got the birds comparatively quickly, along with a range of other 'reservoir' species, and as a bonus a jay digging up its cache at the edge of the lake. That's a bonus, as one can go weeks without seeing a jay, especially in summer. As an added bonus, the local birders were able to show me a peregrine, which was perched on its favourite lookout post.
My next move was to drive across the country to Eyebrook Reservoir, where, as most years, there were several wintering smew. The good thing about Jan 1 is that every other birder is out birding and looking for unusual species, so that we were quickly able to get information about the current whereabouts of a drake smew. They really are beautiful birds when seen well.
I was now in two minds about my next move. There were several birds I needed at Rutland Water, just down the road, but the reservoir is so huge (you can see it on an A4 map of Britain) that looking for birds there really takes a whole day, and involves a lot of pushing my mother's wheelchair. None of the birds being reported at Rutland was unavailable at another site on my list, so I decided to head back towards home and visit my local reserve at Wath Ings (now renamed RSPB Old Moor and well ruined, like anything the RSPB gets it hands on), where there were bramblings reported as coming to the feeders.
For once, bramblings were one bird that I wasn't expecting difficulty with. This year they have taken up residence at feeders at a number of reserves (I saw some on Dec 29th at Titchwell in Norfolk). It seems to be a brambling winter as well as a waxwing winter this year. There was a bit of a wait fir the bramblings to show up at the tree sparrow farm screen feeders, but while I was waiting I was able to tick off a number of farmland species such as yellow ammer and tree sparrow. I also ticked off a few garden birds at the visitor centre feeders, and a few more birds, including goosander, at the deep water mere. There were supposed to be a green sandpiper and two pintail somewhere on wader scrape, but wader scrape hide (now rebuilt from a hide as a huge glass fronted 'visible', and filled with toys to 'encourage children', was, as always on holidays, filled with parents and their screaming children, and I couldn't take it for long, especially as the people there were happy to give up the designated wheelchair space for my mother, but not to vacate an adjacent seat for me, so I wasn't able to speak to her! Never mind, I'm sure I'll get those species somewhere soon.
The light was going by 3.30pm, so end of first day.
My year started at Swithland Reservoir in Leicestershire, where two female Velvet Scoter had helpfully decided to spend the winter inland. Mt decision was based on the fact that one can waste hours or days scanning the seas of Norfolk or East Yorkshire, hoping that a Velvet will fly past among the common scoter, and this is one pressure that can be taken off if a bird has decided to winter inland. We got the birds comparatively quickly, along with a range of other 'reservoir' species, and as a bonus a jay digging up its cache at the edge of the lake. That's a bonus, as one can go weeks without seeing a jay, especially in summer. As an added bonus, the local birders were able to show me a peregrine, which was perched on its favourite lookout post.
My next move was to drive across the country to Eyebrook Reservoir, where, as most years, there were several wintering smew. The good thing about Jan 1 is that every other birder is out birding and looking for unusual species, so that we were quickly able to get information about the current whereabouts of a drake smew. They really are beautiful birds when seen well.
I was now in two minds about my next move. There were several birds I needed at Rutland Water, just down the road, but the reservoir is so huge (you can see it on an A4 map of Britain) that looking for birds there really takes a whole day, and involves a lot of pushing my mother's wheelchair. None of the birds being reported at Rutland was unavailable at another site on my list, so I decided to head back towards home and visit my local reserve at Wath Ings (now renamed RSPB Old Moor and well ruined, like anything the RSPB gets it hands on), where there were bramblings reported as coming to the feeders.
For once, bramblings were one bird that I wasn't expecting difficulty with. This year they have taken up residence at feeders at a number of reserves (I saw some on Dec 29th at Titchwell in Norfolk). It seems to be a brambling winter as well as a waxwing winter this year. There was a bit of a wait fir the bramblings to show up at the tree sparrow farm screen feeders, but while I was waiting I was able to tick off a number of farmland species such as yellow ammer and tree sparrow. I also ticked off a few garden birds at the visitor centre feeders, and a few more birds, including goosander, at the deep water mere. There were supposed to be a green sandpiper and two pintail somewhere on wader scrape, but wader scrape hide (now rebuilt from a hide as a huge glass fronted 'visible', and filled with toys to 'encourage children', was, as always on holidays, filled with parents and their screaming children, and I couldn't take it for long, especially as the people there were happy to give up the designated wheelchair space for my mother, but not to vacate an adjacent seat for me, so I wasn't able to speak to her! Never mind, I'm sure I'll get those species somewhere soon.
The light was going by 3.30pm, so end of first day.