Mother dearest had a day off today and had planned to spend the day at Rutland so I decided to tag along as that seemed a much better idea than this applying for jobs lark - if I have to write about my main tasks whilst working in previous jobs for Argos, Royal Mail, NFU and DHL one more time I'm going to tear my own face off, it was boring at the time and is even more so whilst writing about in hindsight.
Anyway, I digress, off we went to Rutland (via Eyebrook) where we saw birds - 80ish species in the end with the undoubted higlight being the Little Stint on Lagoon 4 which was a lifer for Mumsy. Want to see a photo? Are you sure?
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| you didnt really want to see this did you? |
Apart from the Stint (which proved a right challenge to find - it was hiding near Plover hide) there wasn't much standing out from the commoner fare, not even a nice summer plumaged Sanderling that could have provided some in-hide entertainment in the form of ridiculous claims by the (lets be kind) less experienced, but still enthusiastic birders that seem to get drawn to Rutland in droves. Despite the lack of Sanderlings there were still a couple of cracking mis-identifications today:
Snipe (it was a Redshank)
Osprey (Egyptian Goose)
After we'd been turned away from the path down to Lapwing hide by a big sign declaring hazardous construction work was in progress (perhaps fixing the Savi's fence?) we went back past the visitors centre and had a quick look at the other side of the reserve including the new Tern, Pintail and Kingfisher hides that Mum hadn't visited before but we didnt see much apart from a cracking Short-eared Owl from the new Harrier hide - its still in the same place but the old, creaky, spiders nest has been replaced with a new, soon-to-be spiders nest. Think this is certainly the latest spring bird I have ever seen and was probably the last chance I'll have to photograph one before the autumn so I'm glad one image was usable!
And as I didn't really point the camera at anything else today, have a photo of a sheep:
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| Why are Border Collies so quick on their feet? They've seen what happens to slow sheep. |
Amazing that the SEO is still around - and a good image to boot! Rather like the sheep too, but don't tell anyone!
ReplyDeleteWe seem to have largely got away with any Sanderling related stringing this year, unlike last year when there were several claims of Baird's and Temminck's in the spring that turned out to be Sanderlings!
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