Another earlyish start for a Saturday morning and a visit to Farmoor Reservoir with Kevin Heath. We scanned the water and apron as we made our way toward the causeway mainly noting the regulars, other than a yellow-legged gull on the pontoons. Only halfway across the causeway did we come upon a wader on the water's edge. It was a single dunlin and it allowed a close approach for a photo. Standing still it would even walk past us as it fed - it must be something to do with the causeway but species that would normally flush if approached seem happy to have people close. A couple of common sandpiper bucked the trend.
We continued to the end of the causeway where Kevin picked out two Egyptian geese to our left on F2. In front of us we had two little egrets noisily chasing around a statuesque heron. Behind a couple of yellow wagtails appeared and then a common sandpiper. We saw a couple of birders pass around F1 and they stopped, looking as if they may have spotted something - we headed that way.
Before we got far, we picked out a number of birds in a bush down the slope to our left. We could see a number of blackcap, chiffchaff, whitethroat and goldfinch and spent a while watching them flit about and feed. We set off again seeing that the two birders were still ahead, although they shortly parted and one headed our way. When we drew level, we found it was Thomas Miller and he told us they had actually not been looking at anything in particular. He had though seen a Caspian gull earlier and appeared to be searching to see if he could relocate it - we tagged along as there didn't seem too much point in finishing F1 at present.
We turned back onto the causeway and could see Ewan Urquhart in the distance - Thomas went off to talk with Ewan and behind us a juvenile ruff dropped in. I took a couple of distance shots, but it let us approach - apparently it had been present over the last five days or so and had been very obliging. When Thomas and Ewan caught up with us they mentioned that there were now three dunlin down the causeway - we went to look and stopped to view the ruff again on our return.
We opted to make a circuit of F2 but found no sign of the Egyptian geese from earlier. However, the ruff flew past and landed behind a woman seated on the perimeter wall but was flushed by a jogger before we got close. We had a further sighting of yellow-legged gull and c.70 cormorants over and on the water - quite a fishing party. We completed F2 and stopped for a coffee and a bacon baguette before heading back across the causeway and round F1, finding mostly hirundines.
We finished up watching blackcap, whitethroat and spotted flycatcher in the bushes before making our way to the cars stopping only to view a little egret that paid us no attention from the pomtoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment