Wednesday January 19 - Earlswood Lakes

 This morning I was pleased to join my old friend Mike Inskip for one of his first birding days half way through his hospital treatment. He is doing well, but could only spend an hour with me at Earlswood Lakes where we'd agreed to meet.

I had a shopping list of #LocalBigYear birds I was hoping to connect with, and spotted Tufted Duck and Coot before Mike arrived. I'm clearly taking the mantra "its a marathon not a sprint" to heart. My defence is that Arrow Valley Lake is terrible, and Morton Bagot has been frozen for most of January.

We spent most of our hour at Terry's Pool, with a quick look at Engine Pool. At the former there is likely to be a Little Grebe, but as Tony Philp confirmed, it had been very elusive. Having failed on that, we tried for a Pochard which had been on Engine Pool yesterday. Again we failed, although this time it may have gone.

There were quite a few gulls present, mainly Black-headed Gulls, but a few Herring and Lesser Black-backed. At one point a second-winter gull arrived which I concluded was the Yellow-legged Gull which had been reported recently. 

Yellow-legged Gull

It's a bit on the small side, which could bring a hybrid Lesser Black-backed x Herring Gull into the equation, but could equally mean its a female Yellow-legged Gull. I would have thought that a hybrid would not have been so white headed, although it could be a bit late to be relying on that. Anyway, I'm ticking it as a Yellow-legged Gull, which puts me on 77 for the year.

However, I'm short changing you with just one picture of an interesting bird, so here are some more shots.

Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of it in flight.

Less tricky were a group of Common Snipe resting on one of the man-made islands, a pair of Shovelers, and a pair of Goosanders (another year-tick).

Common Snipe

It would have been nice to spend a bit longer there, but any regret in that regard was vastly outweighed by seeing Mike back in the field.