Sunday December 27 - waterworld

 As storm Bella rattled our south-facing windows last night, I imagined what birds it might deliver to Morton Bagot in the morning. Then I woke up.

The truth is that such winter storms rarely produce anything inland, and definitely not to my patch. Dave joined me as usual, reporting a rather alarming flood affected journey down water-logged lanes to get here. We found that every pool was full to the brim, and wellies were an absolute essential.

The bright sunshine calm revealed lots of worm-loving birds; at least 80 Redwings and 75 Starlings were joined by a Buzzard hunting the easy pickings provided by earthworms caught between a rock and a hard place.

Common Buzzard

Redwing

Starling

We reached the pool field, which now definitely contained a proper pool. About 70 Mallard, 13 Canada Geese, and a few Teal deserted it, alerted by our less than silent approach. This did leave one bird which was a new arrival.

The first Coot since the summer

Though we were naturally thrilled by seeing a Coot, we were also disheartened to hear the sound of water gushing out of the pipe which prevents the pool from being a permanent feature.

We moved on to the flash field, also thoroughly saturated, where it was pretty much the same as usual, although bird numbers were up. We counted 20 Lapwings, 16 visible Snipe, at least seven Wigeon, and at least 35 Teal. Most of the wildfowl were on the furthest flash, some barely visible above due to a combination of grass and topography. 

The Snipe flock

If we were allowed into the field, no doubt many more Snipe would be discovered, but it remains strictly out of bounds.

The walk back produced a trickle of large gulls heading towards Redditch, and among them I noticed a black-backed gull that was noticeably larger than the Herring Gull it was accompanying. Unfortunately just as I realised it must be a Great Black-backed Gull the two of them disappeared behind the line of trees bordering the Morton Brook, and they eluded Dave's efforts to see them. 

The field beyond Stapenhill Wood was also waterlogged and did harbour a few gulls, but six Black-headed Gulls and a Lesser Black-backed Gull was not really enough to encourage us to investigate further.

We only found one Stonechat on site today and the visit petered out in typical mid-winter fashion.