Draycote Geese

My year list is only at 106 and 101 of them were found in January so this morning I decided to give the patch a miss and head up to Draycote Reservoir to try to boost that tally.  As per usual I had a time limit so I was out the door at 06:45.

I was the first car in the car park but only by a few mins, as I was getting the scope out another car arrived with two birders.

I took a walk along to Toft Bank in search of the Smew, I was hoping for Goldeneye and Goosander too as both birds have frustratingly evaded me so far this year.

It wasn't long before I found a female Goldeneye so that was a good start, there didn't appear to be much on the water at all, scope views of the opposite bank showed a large flock of Canada Geese with quite a lot of Mallard and Great Crested Grebe distributed across the far side of the reservoir.

There were loads of Pied Wagtail and even more Meadow Pipit hunting around the grassy verge.  The water close in held quite a few Coot and quite a lot of Little Grebe.

Coot

I arrived at Toft Bank and found the Black-necked Grebe which had also been reported but I couldn't find the Smew anywhere.

Black-necked Grebe

A group of Canada Geese containing a single Greylag Goose flew over head and I got to watch a Buzzard in the field hunting for worms.

The two other birdwatchers had gone on ahead and when returning kindly gave me directions to a field with a flock of Greylag Geese which also contained 2 European White-fronted Geese and a single Pink-footed Goose, these gave me another 2 year ticks.

Crappy phone scoped Geese

1 of the White-fronts - honest....

I should maybe give up with this photography lark - in my defence though, my DSLR seems to have a faulty sensor and my phone got stolen so I'm using a crappy Samsung Fame on which the camera is dire...

On the way back to the car I found 3 male Goldeneye, dapper birds and made up for missing the Smew - which was latter reported as present

Goldeneye

This evening we visited friends in Cheltenham so I took the opportunity to nip to Pitville Park to look for the Dartford Warbler which has been there for some time now.  I left it too late though as it was already past dusk so I failed to find it.  I did manage some great views of a pair of Stonechat though so that was nice.  I had to mess around with the camera a lot with the sensor being knackered, this is the best I could manage.

Stonechat

Stonechat

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