The weather has been unsettled and it was forecast that Sunday morning may be better in the early hours than later morning - Saturday had been a wash-out. I set off for Summer Leyes and arrived as the first car in tne main car park - not the first on site as regulars often park at other entrance points. Stepping out of the car brought a wall of song from the field between me and the water - broken by a few common tern over and the distant black-headed gulls on the islands and scrape. Garden, sedge, willow warblers and chiffchaff all made their presence known.
I peered out over the water and could see hirundines including swift, swallow and both sand and house martin. I looked from the Pioneer Hide and could see redshank but no sign of the spotted - scanning around I could see two black-tailed godwit in the distance.
After a short while I decided to make a circuit of the site adding blackcap and reed warblers as I went. Near the sand martin wall a Cetti's warbler almost burst my eardrum and I stopped to watch it and another individual chasing around beyond the fence. It stopped by a number of times and gave some nice views, even within photo range - it really has been a Cetti's spring.
Contunuing on I eventually found the spotted redshank looking smart in his summer plumage. I watched as it fed passed another wader which turned out to be a ruff.
Continuing round there were more chiffchaff, willow warbler and a green woodpecker feeding in an adjacent field to the right - a common place for me to find one. Soon I was back to the Pioneer Hide and from this vantage point could see that the spotted redshank had relocated here. Always distant but interesting to observe it feeding constantly and as I watched it work across the island I spotted a pale bird which turned out to be a greenshank - that was nice as when I looked for one at Balscote Quarry recently it must have been obscured behind the gorse as other saw it later and the following day.
Ricky Sinfield dropped into the hide - it was good to see him again. While he was talking he mentioned the group feeding by hobby the previous day and I mentioned that I'd seen his photos on Facebook - he suddenly stopped and said that there was a hobby sitting in a nearby tree - to observe social distancing I couldn't squeeze in and made do with a partial view through the leaves. This was an early appearance as it hadn't even reached 10.00am yet - flies were out though. A great visit following more than a year's absence. Sightings (53) included: black-headed gull, black-tailed godwit, blackbird, blackcap, blue tit, buzzard, canada goose, carrion crow, cetti's warbler, chiffchaff, common tern, coot, cormorant, dunnock, gadwall, garden warbler, great crested grebe, great tit, green woodpecker, greenshank, grey heron, greylag goose, hobby, house martin, jackdaw, lapwing, lesser black-backed gull, little egret, magpie, mallard, mistle thrush, moorhen, mute swan, oystercatcher, pheasant, redshank, reed bunting, reed warbler, robin, ruff, sand martin, sedge warbler, song thrush, spotted redshank, starling, stock dove, swallow, swift, tufted duck, wigeon, willow warbler, woodpigeon and wren.
On the way home I saw a message from Mike Curnow that a pair of whinchat were 'still' at the Borrow Pit (by the motorway). I turned off the A43 early and made my way down to park off the A361 and walk in along a footpath. Amazingly the pair were still there but mobile as dog walkers pushed them about - I never got close but took a couple of record shots regardless.
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