The drought continues

The title of this blog may be a bit misleading. The drought refers to the fact that I haven't managed a year-tick since Feb 24 and all our efforts today failed to produce even a single measly Chiffchaff. The water levels on the site are currently very high, and even the island in the main pool is close to being covered.

Dave and I gave it our best shot, and were rewarded with some quality at the flashes. A record count of Gadwall, two drakes and a duck, greeted us on arrival. This time I had my camera with me to record the event for posterity.



One of the drakes and the duck Gadwall

 I had barely had time to congratulate myself for this find, when Dave told me he was looking at a flock of Golden Plovers in the marshy bit between the two flashes. These were well worth seeing as nearly all the previous records had been extremely distant flyovers, and we had never recorded the species on the flash before.



The Golden Plovers

 Dave thought he had counted 17, but after repeated counting with the scope we could get no more than 16 birds, some of which were starting to moult into summer plumage.

A substantial flock of Gulls flew in, 60 Black-headed, four Lesser Black-backed, and two Common Gulls. They joined two Green Sandpipers on the furthest flash. A sudden disturbance resulted in the Gulls going, but the Teal numbers swelled to 62, while four Common Snipe remained visible.

It was at this point that disaster struck. My camera, which had been on the blink since I dropped it a fortnight ago, finally gave up the ghost. If I can't get it repaired somewhere this blog will start to feature field sketches and line drawings for the foreseeable.

Back at the south end we found a mixed flock of 200 Starlings, 100 Fieldfares and 20 Redwings. We also came across up to 20 Reed Buntings and a few Yellowhammers feeding in the stubble on the ridge field.

We spent 30 minutes trying to refind the Tree Sparrow I saw last month, but came up with nothing better than a pair of Marsh Tits. I just hope a pair of the former will find somewhere to breed in the area so that the species doesn't follow Curlew and Grey Partridge onto the formerly bred list.

PS We had been wondering where last month's Shelduck had gone. Lyn and I found the answer as the pair were swimming around on Haselor scrape this afternoon.