Saturday April 16

After heavy rain, sleet, and even a bit of snow overnight and this morning, I was fortunate that it all stopped just as I was leaving the house. Although it was very cold, thanks to a light northerly, the sun was shining by 11.00am.

In fact fate was definitely on my side. Regular readers will know I tend to shun Saturdays and go out on a Sunday. However, this weekend a Sunday Lunch invitation to Ross on Wye was accepted and I changed my plans.

A distant adult Peregrine on a pylon was a good start, and the Sedge Warbler was still singing despite the cold. At the pool I counted 11 Tufted Ducks and a Little Grebe. Then four Pipits flew silently north, they looked quite chunky but it seemed so unlikely that that number would relate to anything like Rock or Water Pipit, that I wrote them off as probably Meadows.

At the flash field the water level was really high and had forced the Redshanks, Green Sandpipers, and Snipe to share a grassy knoll which was now a tiny island. After quite a few minutes I thought I would check the grass for the Pipits and straight away I found a Water Pipit. I scanned left, and there was another, and then another. Although I could not see a fourth, these must have been the birds which had flown by. Fantastic, only the second record for the site, the last being in 2009.

The only shot where I managed to get all three in frame

One of the birds at maximum magnification

I rang Dave, who was at Marsh Lane, and then various others, before settling down to watch the birds so that I could point them out. After 45 minutes or so disaster struck as they all flew up and within seconds I had lost them. Five minutes later Mark Islip arrived, followed by John Yardley, Mike Inskip, and Dave. We set about searching the area, but eventually gave up, having heard a Lesser Whitethroat, and not much else.

The Peregrine

The grassy knoll

I decided I had to head home with, as they say, a song in my heart.