...suppose I'd better write a blog post!

I suppose the lack of activity on this blog could be explained by the fact that the author (me) obviously hasnt done anything or seen anything of note since the last post. This assumption would be wrong, the fact that I've simply been too lazy to upload any photos off my phone is probably closer to the mark....

Anyway, work has carried on as-per-usual at Rutland over the past couple of weeks, the winter work programme is well under way now so there's been a nice introduction to the heap of woodland work we'll be doing this winter.

A spot of scrub clearance along the circular path on Lax Hill also allowed me to photgraph the surrounding lagoons last week, this shot shows Heron bay on the left, Lagoon 8 in the foreground and Lagoon 7 at the back.

Whereas this shot looks North/Northwest, showing Lagoon 5 on the far left, Lagoon 6 in the central foreground and Lagoon 1 at the back.

A bit of work has also been done surveying the Water Vole population on the reserve, you may have seen the Vole rafts (pictured below) dotted around the reserve and these are key to drawing up a census of vole numbers. The voles will use these platforms as latrines and with regular monitoring a picture of relative abundance across the reserve can be obtained.

Learnt to drive this tractor too...and it was good.

Moving onto birding related news, Hooded Birder has bought a scope! Here it is in all its glory, chilling in the garden this afternoon1 Best news of all - my cameraphone still works with it so I'll still be able to provide the odd eye-burner!

I've also managed to do a bit of birding with the new scope this past week. Last Monday (22nd) was the date for a staff trip birdwatching to Norfolk and although it coincided with terrible murky weather conditions it also coincided with a lovely fall of migrants on the East coast! First stop of the day was Holme Dunes where you couldn't really see more than 100 yards in any direction but this hardly mattered as migrants were everywhere! Fieldfare and Redwing in the 1000's, Mipits and Skylarks aplenty, bushes literally heaving with Goldcrest and the odd Chiffchaff, truly a spectacular fall with particular highlights for me being a healthy number of Brambling and two, maybe three Black Redstart. Nothing rarer was winkled out (reports later in the day of RB flycatcher and OBP though) so we moved along to Titchwell where a Little Stint was about the best of it. Good day out though in unbelieveable fall conditions, that one will live long in the memory.

I also had an amble around the North part of Egleton reserve on Friday afternoon, taking in the delights of Lagoon 2, 3 & 4 whilst playing with the new scope.

Birds of note included a few Redpoll and Siskin behind Lagoon 2, 7 Dunlin, 3 Redshank, 1 Ruff and 46 Golden Plover on Lagoon 4 and 5 Snipe and a Green Sandpiper on Lagoon 3.

Lagoon 4 waders

Greenie on 3

Snipe having a scratch

Rutland 29th May

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?

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:

Why are Border Collies so quick on their feet?

They've seen what happens to slow sheep.

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:

Walking Walking Walking

I have a feeling this will end up as a rather long post.... feel free to let your mind wander, look at the photos only and not to read my waffling.

**Disclaimer** I didn't see the Rn phalarope at Rutland yesterday and I do not wish to mention it any further than saying I looked at Lagoon 4, thought it looked dead and chose not to carry on round to Plover hide. Woe is me, would have been a life tick.

Anyway yesterday (4th sept) I found myself at Eyebrook at 6am again but different to last time I wasn't hunting for Cattle Egret, I was merely stopping off there en-route to Rutland for a day birding there. This turned out to be a shorter than usual stopover with very little present to divert my attention. Not one single wader was seen whilst I was there...actually tell a lie there was a single Lapwing on the far bank. But when you consider that there is usually a few hundred Lapwing at Eyebrook things become concerning.....all I can think of is perhaps a fox was worrying the roosting waders in the night. The lack of waders didn't put off the game of Partridge herding though, yesterday was particularly productive....lookie:

After this I made my way over to Egleton, stopping briefly at Manton Bridge where 3 Ospreys were immediately spotted, 1 with a large fish which was possibly a carp/bream and large amounts of waders infront of the Lyndon hides but too far away to identify properly. I resolved to visit the hides at Lyndon later for a better look and made my way to Egleton reserve to fulfil my intention of visiting the new hides that had been open a while and to visit the now re-open Heron and Wigeon hides.
I of course stopped in the hides on the way to the new lagoons and notable sightings included 5 Ruff and a Black-tailed Godwit on Lagoon 1, a Treecreeper in with the tit/warbler flock outside Mallard hide and 3 Green Sandpipers on the new wet meadow (Snipe Hide).

After a quick look in Harrier hide where nothing new was seen except Stock Dove for the day list and a Fox that scared the shit out of everything I moved onto the new path that leads towards the new hides.

Filbert.

So Tern hide on the newly created Lagoon 6 was graced by the Hooded birder for the first time and was unfortunately a bit shit with only a Heron seen (and then a Black Headed Gull on the way back past later) on the whole lagoon but this isn't surprising considering the age of the Lagoon and will undoubtedly improve with age. Here's the view from tern hide.

Poor today but in future this nearby island should provide superb views of nesting Terns and Plovers.

As always with Rutland there is so much to cover and not enough time to do it in so I didn't linger here and moved on round the new path towards the new Kingfisher hide adding Green Woodpecker and Red Kite to the day list at this juncture. This path currently offers a superb overview of the newly created Lagoon 8 - along with tantalising views across to lagoons 5 & 7 which aren't open to the public yet and I must say the team at Rutland have done a cracking job. It's like having a whole new reserve added onto an already enormous one! Less talking more pictures.

view of Lagoon 8

Lagoon 8 from Kingfisher hide

Kingfisher hide produced 4 Blackwits over, a couple more Greenshank, a few Lapwing and the first Common Terns of the day - 1 adult and 4 juveniles seen here and over nearby Heron bay. Kingfisher hide looks even more promising than Tern because this Lagoon is somewhat larger and will almost certainly attract good birds to it although I do have beef with the name of the hide. Kingfisher? When I think of the hides at Rutland this one doesnt immediately jump out at me as being likely to produce Kingfisher more than others, this one has no banks and not even any perching poles! Wigeon hide, a mere stones throw away produced a Kingfisher, perched on a pole, minutes after I left Kingfisher hide which further confirmed my view and made Kingfisher hide look a right tit. Heron bays biggest surprise however was the discovery of a photographer in Heron hide. I had not seen another soul for the couple of hours I'd been on the reserve and found all other hides unoccupied so imagine my surprise when entering one of the more remote hides on the reserve and finding a bloke spread out in there like it was his lounge! A couple more Green sands and Greenshank were on offer too in this area and another Treecreeper was spotted in the small copse where the hides are situated.

With it starting to rain as I walked towards back towards the rest of the reserve I made the decision to attempt to escape the worst of it in the woodland surrounding lax hill - this ploy didnt really work and left me sheltering in Robin hide for the best part of an hour. The feeding station here isn't maintained during the summer months but that didnt put off the birds with another large tit/warbler flock operating in this area that included my 3rd (and best ever haul) Treecreeper of the day, at least two Nuthatch, a juvenile  Greater spotted Woodpecker, a few Goldcrest, brief views of 2 Jay and what I think was a Lesser Whitethroat that gave short glimpses only.

After the rain eased I moved back towards the visitors center visting Goldeneye, Gadwall and Fieldfare hides on the way where large amounts of ducks were in evidence, the best of which being a handful of moulting Pintail - my first of the autumn. A presumed adult female Peregrine flew over at this point too.

Gulls and 2x Pintail

After making my way back to the center I carried on over to the other side of the reserve, being briefly entertained by a Hobby hunting dragonflies over Lagoon 2 before being attacked and viciously persued by the Blackwit from Lagoon 1.

As previously mentioned Lagoon 4 didn't look promising from Dunlin hide so I quickly moved onto Shoveler hide on Lagoon 3 which was also quiet bar a couple of Green Sands so I moved along towards Smew and Lapwing hides which thankfully delivered and produced another Kingfisher and several more waders which behaved nicely and offered decent photographic opportunities that even I couldn't bodge.

Ruffs from Lapwing hide

Green Sandpiper from Smew Hide

After this photography binge I left Egleton and began the trek from Lyndon car park down the Shallow Water Hide to look at the waders - honestly that place should employ sherpas to accompany weary birders on that fucking mission! The walk was worth it however with waders in abundance at my destination. My Ruff count peaked at 34 birds whilst I was there, more than I'd ever seen together! The stars of the show however were 4 Curlew Sandpipers mixed in with the flock of 10 Dunlin. Other waders about included Common Sandpiper, Redshank and two Curlew along with a good flock of juvenile Yellow Wagtail - about 10-12 birds present.

Ruffians

L to R: Dunlin, Curlew Sand, Curlew Sand, R.Plover (foreground), Dunlin

The Ospreys were also on view of course with the three birds that i'd seen earlier in the day now much closer from the hide. So in true Hooded birder shit photograph style I attempted to mimic the inspiring shots you see of the Ospreys on the nest platform with the big country house in the background.....

Mines clearly much better.

After the wader fest at Lyndon I headed home via Eyebrook to see if any waders had turned up and was rewarded with two more Ruff, a Greenshank and a Black tailed Godwit that allowed itself to be photographed by yours truly

Blackwit

Greenshank

Combo

And that was that. 79 species of bird on the day list but no Phalarope.....and I was horrifically close to it in Shoveler hide all along without knowing it was there. Testicles.


5th September
Woke up this morning with my twitching pants on - if the Phalarope was resighted I was there! I did consider a first light, hunt the fucker myself arrangement but after the fiasco of attempting that with Cattle Egret the other week I decided to pass this time. And it hasn't been seen today so I win. With the desire to twitch something burning deeply I ventured out to Frolesworth with the intention of year ticking the two Whinchat that have been sighted there over the past couple of days. And thankfully the little buggers didnt disappoint and were fairly easy to track down once I got to their favoured horse paddock and was joined by a keen observer.

Keen observer

Awesome photo of a Whinchat