We arrived mid-morning to find that parking fees were still not active and that there must be some event as there were a lot of cars and vans. It turned out that there were many seniors there and perhaps some sort of competition - a couple of the sailing boats sported GBR on the sails.
We strode out and set off across the causeway. Initially it didn't look good until a turnstone landed on the F1 side ahead of us. I noticed a young chap ahead who'd presumably been watching it ahead. It fortunately stayed put an I took a few shots. The chap headed down to us and watched (Thomas Miller - @temiller17) as the turnstone fed around the waters edge. Thomas said he'd just seen a ruff fly off across F1 and that there were a couple of ringed plover and a dunlin about.
We moved on and soon came across one of the ringed plover, accompanied by a dunlin. The dunlin initially fed but then decided on a bit of shut eye, leaving the ringed plover to stand guard. We spotted the other ringed plover behind us on the causeway but didn't head back.
We opted to drop down onto the river and made our way along, seeing little of interest. We did see some interaction between male brown and migrant hawker dragonflies, and a few other species I didn't immediately ID.
In the trees by the turn away from the river we came across a vocal cetti's warbler - I stopped to see if I could get a photo but each time I saw it perch, it moved on before I got the camera on it.
We went back up onto the reservoir and continued round F1 in the hope of locating the ruff, but of course we didn't.
Sightings for today (33) included: black-headed gull, blackbird, blue tit, carrion crow, cetti's warbler, chiffchaff, coot, cormorant, dunlin, dunnock, great crested grebe, great tit, greenfinch, grey heron, grey wagtail, greylag goose, herring gull, lesser black-backed gull, magpie, mallard, moorhen, mute swan, pied wagtail, red kite, ringed plover, robin, rook, swallow, tufted duck, turnstone, willow warbler, woodpigeon and wren.
No comments:
Post a Comment