Sunday November 20 - Morton Bagot

 Yesterday was the day to be out. I was accompanying Lyn to a Craft Exhibition in Stratford ! Meanwhile, Tony K was catching shedloads (mostly Blue Tits) at Morton Bagot, but the place to be was Lower Bittell. While most birders were grilling the Red-throated Diver, Tundra Bean Goose, and finding a Kittiwake on Upper Bittell, one lucky observer was at Lower Bittell as a Spoonbill towered overhead and left to the south-east.

This morning I joined Dave for the usual Sunday amble around the patch. In bright sunshine there was just about enough to keep us entertained.

The new scrapes in the pool field are filling up with water nicely, and the area harboured a Kingfisher, three Snipe, and a male Stonechat.

Kingfisher

Stonechat

We reached the flash pools and could see a pair of Shovelers with the Teal, but we didn't immediately appreciate how many of the latter there were. As luck would have it the whole lot took flight at the arrival of an adult Peregrine. When they briefly landed in the middle of the pool we counted 155 Teal before they were harassed away again, finally landing on the furthest flash.

The drake Shoveler

The Peregrine

Some of the Teal

We also logged about 40 - 50 Fieldfares, a similar number of Redwings, six Greenfinches, a Golden Plover and a Redpoll (both of which we only heard).

Fieldfare

Female Stonechat

The Teal flock was not too far short of the site record count which stands at 197 and dates back to the 2011 winter.

Yesterday's ringing totals were as follows:

70 (16) Blue Tits 

12 Great Tits

1 Skylark

10 (3) Long-tailed Tits

2 (1) Robins

1 Blackbird

1 Fieldfare

4 Redwings

3 (1) Wrens

1 Dunnock

1 Chaffinch

1 Bullfinch

2 Greenfinches

2 Lesser Redpolls

4 Goldfinches

Total 115

Lesser Redpoll - per Tony K

Thanks as ever to Tony for sharing the statistics. One of the Blue Tit retraps had been ringed here on 16 December 2018. The Skylark had been caught on Thursday evening using a thermal image camera.