Wednesday August 13 - Earlswood Lakes

 With the heatwave now in full swing, and a busy social calendar unusually engulfing Lyn and myself, I find myself increasingly drawn to making dawn raids to the gravelly shoreline at Earlswood.

The thing about the lakes is that to stand the best chance of finding something you have to get there early, before the dog-walkers and casual strollers find the shore equally irresistible. 

This morning I just beat the sun poking its head over the horizon and scanned Engine Pool for something new. All seemed to be normal, loads of Pied Wagtails recently emerged from their roost, pretending to be waders. Eventually I got onto seven small ducks flying away down the length of the pool and identified them as Teal. They disappeared from view and I assumed they had gone, but some time later found all seven again dabbling in the shallows at the south end.

Two of the seven Teal

 The fact that this was a noteworthy event says a lot about Earlswood. It should contain stable populations of all kinds of waterfowl, but is just too disturbed. 

Returning to the causeway I saw the familiar figure of John Oates approaching and we met up to compare notes. From where we were, we couldn't really be sure that the Teal were still present. The morning then took an exciting, though ultimately disappointing turn, when John heard a Common Sandpiper calling from Windmill Pool. We quickly spotted it flying across the water, but shortly afterwards noticed a second wader flying down the lake at some distance. It appeared brown backed and long-winged, larger than the Common Sandpiper. I suggested Ruff, and John thought that could be a possibility. It landed on a spit right down at the bottom of the lake so we set off in hot pursuit (neither of us carrying a scope).

The bad news is that we never saw it again. Once closer to the spit we scanned in vain, and so we went down to the far end where the only wader was a single Common Snipe. John was sure that wasn't the bird we'd seen, and certainly I had never thought it was a Snipe. We eventually established there were two Common Sandpipers present, but again they were not the bird we'd seen.

Near misses are all part of the birding game. It can be a frustrating hobby at times. I had to leave, while John returned to Engine Pool where the Teal had also checked out. He did however see a Gadwall, which I had missed.

Much ado about nothing you may think, but it will be enough to encourage further optimistic early morning visits.