Tuesday 5 May 2015

Another day, another wader!

May 4th - I didn't fancy an early morning today - not a good attitude for finding birds!  Anyway, we had semi-planned a family walk along the river before lunch.  So when the text arrived from Alan S saying that 2 Whimbrel were on the spit just before we were due to leave, it made the decision of where to start the walk much easier!

Whimbrel, along with Blackwits, are about the most regular of the scarce large waders on patch and most Springs will turn up a few birds.  So at about 11am, with a quick minor detour, I spent all of 30 seconds looking through Alan's scope at a nice pair of Whimbrel.  We continued on our walk, which was very nice in the warm sunshine - birds on note were a Yellow Wagtail flying off from the cattle field and a couple of singing Whitethroats.

On our way back to the car, I received another text from Alan saying that Jackie N had found a male Mandarin on the east side of the lake, but only viewable from the east side - this was unfortunate, as our walk did not take us this way, so that year tick would have to wait.

Fortunately, I had a spare hour late afternoon, so made my way down again.  I drove straight to the east side and within a few minutes was looking at a distant male Mandarin.  It is surprising how scarce these are on site, particularly as it is not too difficult to find them on the Thames nearby - I average about one sighting a year and usually of wandering males.  Suddenly, for some unknown reason, the Mandarin took off and flew towards the main island where I lost sight of it.  Then, the two Whimbrel revealed their continued presence by taking off and calling.  I watched them distantly as they flew around but then descended back to the spit.  I decided then to drive quickly back to the west side, as I wanted to take some record shots.  On arrival, the two birds were quite close on the near spit, so I grabbed some reasonable records.  They were calling fairly constantly and took off several times, but kept returning, but they were obviously looking to leave.  They were still there when I left at 4:30pm but were seen to fly off high north just 30 minutes later.  An added bonus was that the Mandarin had also flown to the near sand spit, so I was able to take some shots of him too!






I like this one - Mandarin shaking, tern looking skywards

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