Tuesday
5th January very light SW sunny intervals, mild 9C
A
great friend, Mark Simkins arrives on his Honda 500cc motorbike at 10:30 and so a
day's birding begins at Slimbridge, the HQ of the Wildfowl &
Wetland Trust.
After
a quick chat with effervescent Ellie, the ex-fundraising officer for
the WWT, it is to the Rushy Pen hide we go and we find the two female
scaup amongst the masses of tufted duck. There are also a few
bewick swans to add to year list. These please me as last year I only
saw one! Pintail are as superbly beautiful as ever and go onto
the list.
Mark
and I head out to the Holden Tower to look over The Dumbles towards
the River Severn. There are masses of birds with very large flocks of
lapwing and golden plover. Dunlin are mixed in amongst
them and there are small numbers of a few duck species. There is also
a flock of barnacle geese but I am unsure about their origin.
Category C on the British list I am later told but I feel the same way abut these as I
did the snow geese on Coll and don't count them.
On
Tack Piece, a flooded field within the sea wall there are a huge
number of teal. The WWT website recent sightings page reports that
there was over 23,000 there yesterday and a search through them
doesn't give me a green-winged teal. I had to look after what
happened last year at RSPB Loch Leven.
There
are a few, relative to what numbers there used to be here in the
past, whitefronted geese, the first year tick of the day.
Nowadays the geese stay over in the Netherlands. There is also a
flock of around one hundred black-tailed godwits, another year
tick.
A
large female sparrowhawk is hunting along the hedgerow and a buzzard
is sitting on a post with it's wings in a strange relaxed pose.
With
a view over towards the Zeiss hide I find the grey phalarope again.
The
rest of the day is spent alternating brief wild bird watching moments
with prolonged travel experience chats; Mark having been to
Ppatagonia recently as well as having treked up both Mount Kenya and
Kilimanjaro last year. Mark particularly likes the various flamingo species.
Once
Mark leaves I return to the hides overlooking Tack Piece and find
ruff, the final year tick of the day.
Back
at the excellent and very quiet Wild Goose Lodge nearby I have an
early night, falling asleep early to the sound of a hooting tawny
owl.
The
Green Year list now stands at 85.
No comments:
Post a Comment