Moments later I heard then saw a pair of Mandarin flying away from me along the Loddon, which I then flushed again outside Ron's hide, where they flew towards the North end of LFGP.
When in the hide, I found 2 Oystercatcher, joined by 3 more briefly, one landing in front of the hide so I missed the brief chance to get a record shot of all 5, but did get one of the one close by.
I could hear Redshank, but it took me ages to find it and when Brian walked in, I said that it was so noisy there must be two around, moments later, one, then the second joined it in front of the hide.
 |
| bloomin twigs |
The Mandarin were now circling the lake every few minutes and we watched them land in the Oak at the North end, you can make the female out in the bottom left and the male just about in the top right of the shot below.
A flock of about 35 Fieldfare and 20+ Redwing had taken my attention for a moment and I was packing up to go when a large gull circled in with LBB's, but it was a nice mid grey above and I said "we have a good candidate here", it landed in the SW corner and sure enough was a rather splendid 4th calendar year Yellow-legged Gull, which stayed for all of 2 minutes.
After all the fun of earlier, I am looking down the list of 88 species so far for March and think we could easily blow the 95 record out of the water.
Birds frequently seen in March, but yet to reported are (in bold would be year ticks) : Bittern, Pintail, Garganey, Red Crested Pochard, Goosander, Ruff, Little-ringed Plover, Ringed Plover, Jack Snipe, Med Gull, Tawny Owl, Barn Owl, Skylark, Meadow Pipit, Sand Martin, Swallow, House Martin, Wheatear, Blackcap, Brambling & Linnet.
No comments:
Post a Comment