Pectoral Sandpiper - Salford Priors GP

Sitting at home, about to eat my lunch. The phone rings. It's Mike. He has found a Pectoral Sandpiper at Salford Prior GP near Alcester. Sharp exit.

I arrived at 13.50 to find no-one there. The locality is actually a rectangular pool scraped from a former gravel pit beside the road from Dunnington to Broome. Mike had said it was on an island, and there was only one island in the corner of the pool.

Sure enough, it was still present. Phew.

Pectoral Sandpiper

I took a few photos before Jim Winsper turned up with his wife. I didn't get too close as I didn't want to be responsible for a sudden disappearance. A pretty typical Pec. The legs were rather dull green, rather than the bright yellow they usually are, but most of the ones I have seen have been juveniles in autumn.

Ringed Plover and Pectoral Sandpiper

Compared to a Ringed Plover, it was surprisingly slightly smaller. Perhaps a female.

Other birds present included two Little Ringed Plovers, a pair of Shelducks with eight ducklings, a pair of Gadwall, and about 50 Swifts.

An easy twitch. Mike and Jean returned from the pub, and John Yardley also arrived before I left. Not exactly a crowd.

Sunday May 31

The weather was back to wet and windy this morning, though actually not too wet, and not too windy.
Dave and I were tempted back to the patch, where I noticed a Mistle Thrush on telegraph wires at Netherstead.

We decided to head for the pool and flashes, and almost got our timing right, but not quite. As we walked passed the pool the first distant scan of the flash field produced birds of interest. Two medium sized waders appeared in flight from behind one of the oak trees. To use a cricketing analogy, you have to hold your catches, and I am afraid we fumbled this one. My mistake was to decide these non-descript waders would fly off and to spend several seconds faffing about trying to get my scope off my back and set up. Dave, meanwhile, stayed on the birds and reported they had turned back and were dropping, eventually stating that they must have dropped onto the nearest flash.

Dave was sure they would turn out to be Ruff, and I had seen nothing to doubt he was right. We were certain we would find them on the flash, but depressingly all we could see was a pair of Redshank and a Little Ringed Plover. A third Redshank dropped in before flying off showing obvious white secondaries and white rump. Surely if the birds had been Redshanks we would have noticed these features.

We clung to the hope they may have landed somewhere else, but there was no sign. Could we count them? If you are not 100% sure, you have let them go, so that's what we did.

We needed to see something good to cheer us up. Two Snipe were showing at the edge of the main pool and a Little Owl flew past. Quite good. A damselfly showed well, a Banded Demoiselle.

Banded Demoiselle

Nice.

Proper compensation came from the tiny dragonfly pools where Dave pulled up and shouted "Little Egret!" As he did so the bird flew up, and happily did a brief fly-by before heading off to the north.

Little Egret

A silver lining.

Red Kite - Sat May 30

Not birding today, but nevertheless Lyn and I spotted a Red Kite from the A34 between Bearley and Pathlow as we headed to Stratford on a shopping trip.

Upton Warren Friday May 29

The forecast for this morning was pretty dire, and so a wet weather contingency plan was called for. Apart from twitching the Red-necked Grebe last month it has been years since I went to my old patch, Upton Warren, so I was keen to see how it looked.

I started at the flashes, and it was fantastic. Having got used to watching Springwatch this week, I discovered that Upton Warren is now a mini-Minsmere. A sturdy fence all around it keeps out the ground predators, and the birds have responded in spades.

The hide now has a bottom tier, which opens up the possibility of taking Lyn on future visits. In front of the hide, everything is nesting.

Eight-legged Avocet

Avocet with bigger chicks

The rain was initially fairly light, but even so, all the Avocets which had chicks were spending much of their time protecting them from the elements. I counted 28 Avocets and at least 17 chicks (the log book said there were 23). Avocets are fantastic birds, but there is a downside to having them breeding here. They are extremely aggressive to any migrant waders which might consider visiting. Fortunately the pair of Black-tailed Godwits which have been around for a few days were sufficiently settled to remain.

Black-tailed Godwits

The sheer number of breeding birds was staggering. Black-headed Gulls totalled at least 170 adults and 95 chicks, and kept up a Minsmere-like cacophony the whole time. There were only eight Lapwings present, but two of them had broods of young.

Another breeding wader was Little Ringed Plover, and I could see two incubating birds. A quick look at the log-book told me that a pair of Shoveler had hatched a brood of ducklings for the second successive year after a 67 year absence. I scanned the third flash and was just in time to see the pair, with at least two tiny ducklings, before they swam out of view. Another adult male was much closer to the hide.

drake Shoveler

Another prominent duck species was Shelduck. At least six adults were present, and I wasn't too surprised to find that they too had ducklings.

A brood of Shelducklings

At about 09.30 the rain intensified, with predictable effects.

Many of the birds, particularly the Black-headed Gull chicks started pointing their bills skywards to reduce the dampening of their plumage/down. Suddenly some passage waders arrived.

Ringed Plovers

Four Ringed Plovers had dropped in at 09.40. Within five minutes they were looking uncomfortable (Avocet pressure), and they were off, heading north for the tundra.

A Cuckoo had been calling when I arrived but the rain shut it up. When the rain eased off I decided to head back. The gravel pit was now hosting over 100 House Martins, 30 Sand Martins, and 30 Swallows plus a few Swifts.

I drove to the Moors Pool to find it too was covered in birds, but a different cast. Two pairs of Oystercatchers had young.

Oystercatcher and chick

The sun was out, and it was as though the rain had never happened. I added to my count of Tufted Ducks to come up with a total count of 64 on the reserve. Also two Little Grebes, two pairs of Great-crested Grebes with chicks, and about two pairs of sitting Common Terns.

Cetti's Warblers sang, but evaded my lens. I had to settle for a Dunnock with a crane-fly all ready to be stuffed in its offspring's gape.

Better than Morton Bagot? Just a bit!

Sunday May 24

With rain forecast for the morning, Dave decided to go to Marsh lane GP, while I sat it out at home until about 11.00am when the rain stopped.

So when I finally got out I trudged round under cloudy skies which occasionally parted to allow a little sunshine. Bird-wise it was pretty unexciting. I confirmed the colour-ring number of the female Mute Swan (which Dave had correctly read last week despite having to work it out while the leg remained submerged). I'll post an update when I know where it was ringed.

The Redshanks were getting frisky again at the flashes, and a Little Ringed Plover was still present. A pair of Greylag Geese in the far field has at least two goslings, while five Ravens flying around included adults and recently fledged juveniles. The highlight came at the very end of the visit as a Hobby shot over Netherstead pursued by alarmed hirundines.

Luckily there were a few insects to look at. These included an attractive beetle called Oedemera nobilis. The swollen back legs indicate that it is a male.

Oedemera nobilis

Also a moth called Silver-ground Carpet, which is apparently common. I haven't identified one before though.

Silver-ground Carpet

By the time I was back at the car the clouds were heavier again and it was starting to drizzle. Time to go home.

Friday May 22

I arrived at the same time as a drizzly shower, but once it had passed the conditions were ok for some surveying at the south end. This produced, rather irritatingly, a singing Willow Warbler audible from the road. Why irritating? Well on the bird race day I didn't bother to check out the south end because it never gets anything! We didn't record a Willow Warbler that day, and I think it very likely that it was present.

Back at the car I chucked the coat as it was showing signs of warming up. Still no Reed Warblers in residence, but I noticed that the Coot eggs have started to hatch on the little pond opposite the dragonfly pools.

Looks that only a mother could love

I had brought the sketch book this morning and was planning to target the Coot's near relative, Moorhen. After briefly seeing one at another pond, I connected at the flashes.

I found them quite tricky subjects as they were always on the move. I soon got tired of them and noticed that there was nothing new sharing the flash, just a pair of Redshanks, a pair of Little Ringed Plovers, and a few Lapwings and Coots.

With the weather now quite warm I noticed that about 30 corvids were jinking about, high in the sky, presumably catching insects in the same way Starlings do on warm summer afternoons. There were large numbers of flies at my level too, and it didn't take me too long to belatedly break my dragonfly duck.

Beautiful Demoiselle

A pretty good dragonfly (actually a damselfly) to get off the mark with. The Beautiful Demoiselle favours wooded streams, and there is one small part of brook which seems just right. I later saw another species of damselfly, but as it was a female type I wasn't able to identify it.

The final photo opportunity was provided by a Harlequin Ladybird.

Wednesday May 20

Lyn and I decided to get a takeaway when I got home from work, so I ended up making a very late arrival (19.45) at the patch. I planned to stay until well after dusk in the hope of nocturnal birds.

The low sunshine allowed me to take a shot of a backlit Brown Hare on the way to the pools.

I was pleased to see that the pair of Canada Geese have successfully bred, producing four goslings.

Other waterfowl remaining included Little Grebes, Tufted Ducks, Redshanks, Little Ringed Plovers, and perhaps most intriguingly a drake Teal. My hunt for nocturnal species began well, with a Little Owl in a completely different part of the patch from its usual haunt. By 21.00 the sun had dipped below the horizon, and I heard a final burst of song from a Whitethroat near the bridlepath. A bird flew out and I casually picked it out with my bins. Thank goodness I did, because I found it was not the Whitethroat, but instead my first ever spring Spotted Flycatcher at Morton Bagot. Result!

Actually they did breed at Netherstead when I first visited the patch in 2007, but it was early August before I actually saw them, and they had disappeared by the following year. The only other breeding record was from three years ago, but on that occasion I didn't find the birds until early July.

As I walked back to the road a Tawny Owl called in the distance. Now the challenge was on, Little and Tawny under the belt. Back at the road I scanned the valley, and bingo, a Barn Owl was hunting distantly in the ridge field. All three Owls in one visit, although admittedly the Tawny Owl was just a hoot.

What a hoot!