A last trip out for the year and a little twitch to see ring-necked duck at Thrupp Lake, Radley GP. The rain kindly stopped on the way there and Kevin Heath and I must have been thinking the gods were being kind to us - wrong. We studied all the ducks on our rotation of the lake but couldn't pick it out. On the eastern bank we came across a birder scanning the water with his scope - he reported that he hadn't located it either. We paused to join the vigil but decided we should continue round and make sure we left no stone unturned. We reached the cycle path and had lost sight of the water - woodland birds became the species of interest.
We reached the gate back into the reserve and started again. Kevin Heath picked out a great crested grebe that had caught and lost a fish and predicted it would soon surface with it again - as usual he was right. I managed to get a few shots as it made short work of devouring a perch.
We bumped into the birder encountered earlier and he reported spotting the RN duck from the other bank but that it had been making its way towards the islands in the centre of the lake - he was relocating to see if he could spot it again from the western side. We tried north, south, east and west and found nothing; well, when I say nothing we did add some little egrets and two drop in Egyptian geese. We'd had a good morning and a nice walk, but it was a bit frustrating not to be able to find our target bird. Oh well, maybe next year 😄.
Below I've compiled a collage of some of my favourite photos from 2021 and I hope you enjoy seeing them again. Finally, a happy New Year to anyone reading this and hope you are looking forward to another year of birding as I am - let’s hope it is another good one!
No comments:
Post a Comment