The New Year is something I always look forward to not for any festive reason but it is the start of another birding year. I am asleep before mid-night with thoughts whizzing in my head of how the forthcoming day will pan out in!
This morning “Jack Frost” also had plans which incidentally bore no resemblance to my own! He had thrown a white curtain over the land, without any contingency plans attached! The lanes were decidedly slippery but I decided to stick to the plan and get to Silverlake (Warmwell Gravel Pits) by first light. It was no surprise that the fields and large areas of the lakes were frozen with little wildfowl present!
I could not initially find the White-fronted Geese that have been resident in the area for a few weeks! I did catch up with some of them on the East Lake later in the morning when the sun broke through taking the chill off the air! The Long Tailed Duck was still present on the middle pit but had been confined to the eastern end as a result of the big freeze!
I returned to closer to home and the River Piddle flood plain which had a good flow of icy cold running water. A couple of Green Sandpiper, Chiffchaff and Little Egret were the best of the crop on the water with Redwing and Fieldfare in the sticky fields at the Tollpuddle end of the plain.
The story was a similar one at Lodmoor RSPB where I had a brief stay which saw one of the Marsh Harriers hugging the tops of the reeds. There are Bittern present but I will need to stake out the area to catch flight shots of the birds.
Throughout the day I had been keeping in contact with Brett and a visit to the Wareham Channel Gull roost was to be the day’s last throw of the dice. It proved to be productive with a couple of Yellow-legged Gulls, a Med Gull and good numbers of shorebirds arriving as the tide dropped. The Heavy Artillery was very useful in this instance!
I have another plan for tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment