Farmoor Grey Phalarope

This week a very obliging Grey Phalarope has been resident at Farmoor Reservoir and was unbelievably joined by another!!  Farmoor is just off my route home at the weekend so all fingers were crossed they'd stay till the Friday.  Fortunately they did and I was treated some ridiculous views, unfortunately they weren't ridiculously close enough for some idiots who felt the need to cross the wall to lay on the water line.  The distance from the path to the Phalaropes was only 5 meters....!!

Anyway, rant over I'm still over the moon as this was a Lifer.....sweet!!

Grey Phalarope

Grey Phalarope

Grey Phalarope

Grey Phalarope

Grey Phalarope

Grey Phalarope

 

Also present were a couple of Grey Wagtail, a Great Northern Diver which I had distant views of across the other side of the reservoir and a Red-necked Grebe which I failed to locate, I was only there briefly so didn't go around the whole site.

 Grey Wagtail

Farmoor Reservoir

My journey home from work takes me along the M40 so on route home on today I decided to pull off for a quick visit to Farmoor Reservoir to see the summer plumaged Red-necked Grebe.

I arrived to a nice sunny site and was able to walk around in a t-shirt, it was very quiet though, only one other car in the car park. The first birds I saw were 2 of these cute little ducklings:

Mallard Chick

One of the workers from the yacht club said there were 5 of them the day before, I suppose they stand out being yellow and are probably easy prey. I started to walk around the F2 reservoir as the Red-necked Grebe was reported to be in the SW corner - typical, the furthest possible point from the car park.... A female Mallard was swimming around with her ducklings, she had 12 in total! The ducklings were of a decent size so hopefully they will all survive.

Mallard & Chicks

There were quite a few Great Crested Grebes, I reckon there must have been 40 of them, they were looking resplendent in their bright summer colours, a number of pairs were starting their weed dance but they none did more than dabble.

Great Crested Grebe

Great Crested Grebe

I spent about half an hour in the SW corner and checked Great Crested Grebe after another but was unable to locate the Red-necked Grebe - typical...

I decided to head down to the Pinkhill hide to see if any waders were about, shouldn't have bothered though as some twat(s) have burnt it down, really pisses me off to see this, I went to two reserves last year where this had happened.

I then walked down to have a look at the fields were the Barn Owls can be seen hunting during the day although I never expected to see them at this time of year but one can hope. There were no Barn Owls though. I thought I'd head back to the car and check the F1 reservoir for the Red-necked Grebe on the way back. I bumped into another birder who had seen the Grebe - in the SW corner...! I couldn't believe it... He showed me it through his telescope, I could see it was close to the opposite site and couldn't resist tabbing back round to see if I could get some photos.

The tab back round was worth it as I got some amazing views, I must have taken about 200 photos of him. He was up and down the south side of the reservoir so kept me on my toes. Before I left the Grebe was up and down collect fish.

Red-necked Grebe

Red-necked Grebe

Red-necked Grebe

Red-necked Grebe

Red-necked Grebe

I couldn't stay forever so finally upped and left and was lucky enough to see my first Swallow of the year when one flew over my head but then turned and headed back over farmland. A bit further round another 2 Swallows flew over and out over the water and another 3 about 200m further round.

Swallow

Last bird was a handsome Pied Wagtail.

Pied Wagtail

I do like visiting Farmoor, for an inland site it has some great birds stop over, a Firecrest had been reported earlier that day and an Avocet was reported as arriving later in the day.

Farmoor

Was unsure where to go today so decided to head over to Farmoor as it's always been reasonably good to me, even though it is always freezing cold there....

Surprisingly it was quite devoid of wildfowl in comparison to my previous visits, a quick scan of F2 revealed a pair of Goldeneye and the odd Coot so took a walk along the causeway, had a quick scan of the Tufted Duck and notice 4 Scaup (2 pairs); it's taken me years to see my first Scaup, the first occasion being last year, now since then I have seen them on a regular basis at a number of sites as is typical with bird watching.

Scaup with the Tufted Duck

 

Next up was a male Goldeneye who obviously felt king drake in this pond with his hareem of 6 ducks in tow, not sure if the obvious benefits of 6 women outweigh 6 x nagging? (be in for it with the missus now!), also saw this Cormorant with an extremely white head.

 

 Goldeneye

 

Cormorant

 

Since there didn't appear to be too much on the Reservoir I thought I'd take a look in the Pinkhill Reserve but again not much to see as the whole area was flooded, there were however 4 Snipe skulking about, another bird which has seemed extremely abundant this winter.  Luckily I visited the hide as another birder came in and informed me that they'd just been watching a Barn Owl hunting so of course I headed over and got some fantastic views of it hunting in daylight.

 

 

Barn Owl

 

After watching the Barn Owl for about 10 minutes I walked back to the car via the causeway and managed to see, not a Rock or Water Pipit running up and down the water line but of course a Meadow Pipit, typical.. Then just as I was leaving I got to watch a Great Black Backed Gull fly in, still amazes me just how big they are.

 

Meadow Pipit