From sunrise to sunset

I was a mite over-eager this morning, arriving at Eyebrook a full 30 minutes before it was light enough to see any birds. Unbeknownst to me this would work out in my favour for the first target bird of the day: the returning Green winged Teal that was just gagging to get onto my year list. Anyway as it was still dark I drove around to the Stoke Dry carpark to waste time more than anything else and was delighted to find the Teal almost straightaway once it was light enough to see things.

 With crappy light-starved record shots in the bag I turned to the gargantuan task of trying to pick the single drake Smew out of the literal thousands of other birds on the water. I was immediately drawn to a small mixed group of ducks about 80 yards away that were doing that thing that ducks do where they all pile into one tiny spot and feed in a frenzied sort of fashion. The Smew wasn't present but I must have been looking for approximately 3 seconds when it flew into the centre of the group and started feeding. Win! This allowed me to relax with both target birds in the bag and have a peek at what was visiting the feeders in the car park:

I soon moved onto my next stop: the Fishermans car park on the Hambleton Peninsular where I didnt see the Long tailed Duck and then onto the Old Hall area where I didn't see the Snow Bunting but did manage to pick out a few Scaup snoozing with the Tufted Ducks and couldn't resist taking a terrible phonescoped image of them:

Or when this monstrosity walked within range of the new camera, had to be done im afraid:

With time as always at a premium at Rutland I gave in with the Bunting (we did see a flock of 80 last week in Norfolk!) and headed over to the Egleton reserve. Ah, Egleton Reserve, how i've missed you. It must have been over 2 months since my last visit and that is frankly uncouth behaviour! So off I went straight to Lagoon 3, only stopping off briefly at Osprey Hide on Lagoon 2 to bag a Green Sandpiper.
Lagoon 3 was pretty productive with one of these ridiculously close to the hide:

Along with plenty of ducks, the best of which being 3 redhead Smew which sadly were out of effective camera range. These Gadwall came just about close enough though:

The bird I most wanted to see at Rutland today hadn't shown itself yet though... the Jack Snipe! Jack's are notoriously difficult to see and having only ever seen one other I was keen to see this one after it had been reported with some regularity from Shoveler Hide recently. After a good while spent grilling the nearest islands several Snipe sp. could be just about seen hunkered down in the vegetation, asleep. One by one they shifted or moved to reveal Common Snipe, damn!

I decided to take a break from all the excitement and took a stroll down to Smew Hide where this Mute Swan was just begging to be photographed:

Well, that was until this chap turned up and stole my attention away!

damned twig!

Once the Kingfisher relocated over to the other side of the Lagoon I carried on down to Lapwing Hide, now re-open, and feasted my ocular devices on an enormous Golden Plover flock, mixed in with about 30 Dunlin and several hundred Lapwing.

Walking back past Shoveler hide I resolved to give the Jack Snipe another go and it paid off almost immediately! A movement caught my eye and it transpired to be the Jack doing its trademark hopping routine in amongst the Snipe I had been grilling earlier! The problem was that with the extensive vegetation only a small part of the bird was visible at any one time - a bit like LEO watching! And thus that made getting an image of the bird rather challenging. Behold:

There is a crappily drawn red circle, honest. In the middle was........

this! 

Eventually the little scamp bobbed out of sight and as time was getting on I hightailed it back to the visitors centre and over towards Lax Hill, bagging a Treecreeper, two Curlew and the 4 long staying Bewicks Swans on the way.

Nothing else was new for the day until Robin Hide when unbelievingly my first Pheasants of the day were under the feeders and a Marsh Tit flitted around in the bushes:

But the best was saved for last as I walked back in the gathering gloom, hoping for a Tawny Owl encounter if im honest but I certainly wasn't complaining when this Short eared Owl was hunting over Lax Hill in the twilight:

21st and 22nd August. Wild egret chase

I have developed a new nemesis over the last couple of days. And that nemesis is the Cattle Egret, Bubulcus ibis. One turned up at Eyebrook at a similar time to this last year and I missed it, so when one had been reported on Saturday I made my way over early on Sunday afternoon to try and see the beast. Made a rookie manoeuvre from the off in wearing the trademark hoodie - it was absolutely roasting. Now a normal person could have fixed this by simply removing the offending item of clothing but no such luck for me, In my wisdom I hadn't worn a shirt underneath and rather than expose my doughy physique to the world I cooked. Slowly.  Upon arriving it was patently obvious that the bird wasn't in the area it had been reported, and over the next two hours it became even clearer that the bird wasn't present anywhere, with it last being seen fucking off high Northwards. Bugger. A few decent birdies such as 7 Ruff, 2 Greenshank and half a dozen juvenile Yellow Wagtail (there were two Whinchat seen with the wagtails earlier in the day, but I didn't pick them out) did little to compensate. So I went home to watch the cricket in the end. And then saw that the Cattle Egret had returned to Eyebrook. What a bastard. So plans were made for Monday. Oh and I saw a Weasel at Great Easton whilst I was roaming around looking for cows.

22nd August
And so I found myself at the viewing area near the island bright and early at 6am this morning. Sightings of Little Owl, Muntjac deer and Bat sp. en route to the site made for a good start, made all the more better by a group of 3, closely followed by a group of 2 Egrets flying straight over my head within seconds of arrival and landing in the area the Cattle Egret had been seen last the night before. All 5 turned out to be Little Egret. The dirty rotters. A pair of Hobby briefly caused what may have been classed as pleasure but it was mainly annoyance with the unpredicatable nature (and downright indecency) of the Egret. Even worse my Ruff count peaked at 6 birds today and I only saw 1 Greenshank. A Green Sandpiper was added to the day list here though.
Being at Eyebrook early in the morning is always enjoyable but after a couple of hours I got bored with not seeing the Egret and became confident that i'd looked pretty damn thoroughly for it and it was almost definitely not present. And so I made my way over to Ketton quarry with the intention of satisfying the Llama and finding a real, live adder for my Leicestershire reptile list. Although its not an ideal time of year for adder I was reasonably confident of a sighting as Ketton is adder-tastic and it was a lovely warm, sunny day when I arrived on site shortly before 9am - theoretically perfect for a basking snake. In practice however no snakes were seen. Not one. I was on site for the best part of 3 hours, enjoying the sunshine and the cacophany of woodland bird song belting out from the surronding area. I did find a skin though. This one was about 2 feet long.

The visit wasn't totally devoid of reptiles however, with many many Common Lizards in evidence. Trying to get a close look (or a photo for that matter) of these little devils is a challenge though as they rarely sit still! I did see one enormous individual though, he/she was huge!


Spot the lizard


Other good stuff seen whilst at Ketton included two flyover Raven, Jay, Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Lesser Whitethroat, the two commoner Woodpeckers and what were my best ever views of a Stoat. It made its way down the side of the "ampitheatre", stalked and then chased a couple of rabbits and then promptly sat on a flat rock and stared at me (I was only about 15 feet away) for what seemed like an age although it was probably only a few seconds. As soon as I moved (in this case to attempt a photo) though it shifted sharpish and wasn't seen again!

Eventually, I left Ketton at around midday and after a quick scan of Eyebrook on the way, went home and watched England be well good at cricket. Oh, and the Egret turned up at Burley Fishponds this evening. The turd.

Edit: Oh and a juv. Blackcap was sighted in the garden rare bush on Sunday. Bonanza.

Disclaimer

In preparation for the highly awaited unveiling of my collection of  bird photos, a modest disclaimer is needed I feel. The photos are terrible. I'm well aware of their ability to burn retinas and cause projectile vomiting. The "camera" used for all of my images is the one on the back of my phone (sony ericsson xperia x10) and is undeniably aweful. The poor camera is also further scuppered by the fact that pressing it against the telescope eyepiece results in no image whatsoever, for best results the camera lens needs to be hovered skillfully around 1cm away from the scopes eyepiece. Which is challenging. Despite all of the woes I face when taking a photo some of the results can possibly described as "not a complete bag of fetid shit".

See..... two wood sands at Eyebrook on Monday and they are almost identifiable!

................I will buy a camera at some point