Finding stuff....

Oh how I could have kicked myself this morning. As I hadn't done much birding recently today had been earmarked for a tour of a few sites in Leicester that I hadnt visited in a while with the hope of finding something nice. Recently I've noticed a definite change in my birding habits - a couple of years ago when I was relatively new to the hobby I was more than happy to decide where to go birding on the basis of what was being reported on the LROS page, there were many species I hadn't seen in the county and many more birdwatching sites that I'd never visited before and this news service simplified matters on where to go and what to look for. Now as I'm a touch more knowledgeable about birding in Leicestershire I've been becoming increasingly eager to find my own birds rather than go and look at other peoples. Now, im not talking about stringy, one-observer reports of Short toed Larks, more like finding my own Ring Ouzel or GG Shrike.
So that brings me back to the wanting to kick myself bit - as mentioned above I had planned to get up and out nice and early this morning to visit a few sites, one of which was Swithland reservoir. So imagine my annoyance at 11.45 this morning (the snooze button got abused) when the news broke of a summer plumaged Black necked Grebe at Swithland. That should have been my Grebe!
Annoyed, I vowed to not go and see the Grebe even though I'd never seen a summer plumaged one before and went to Brascote Pits instead to find something else. In the end I didn't find much at the pits themselves besides a new lake since the last time I visited and four Oystercatcher but that was about it.

New Lake at Brascote Pitts, this used to be some promising looking passerine habbo!

The real star of the show however was found en-route to the pits when a familiar looking blob in a roadside tree had me slamming on the brakes in a rather unsafe fashion and turning around for a second look. I was glad I did.

This was certainly a new and previously unknown site for me and after a quick correspondance with Paul Riddle it became clear that it wasn't one of his known sites either. I found something! Jackpot!

After a look at Thornton res. where Swallow, House Martin and Sand Martin found their way onto my year list I got lost on the way home and whilst scanning the surrounding countryside with the scope to find my way home I saw this, dont know how it happened really, it was all a blur: