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| Snowdrops - Slimbridge (Bath Birdwatcher) |
A change of
venue this week, WWT Slimbridge as it’s a good place to see lots of
wildfowl with numbers of geese that we
would be hard pushed to find locally. Bryan was unable to join us, so it was
just David and myself, Tony. On the way driving over Lansdown we spotted a
field full of gulls some flying, these were easily identifiable as Common Gulls we also spotted 2 Red Kites as we were about to join the A46 plus
another in the Kingscote area. 2 Ravens flew
over the A46 in front of us. Driving up the approach road to Slimbridge Collared Doves were seen and in a field by the
sharp S bend was a Little Egret. Nothing new
until we were in the grounds where Coot and Moorhen were everywhere, making our way to the
Decoy Hide Mallards were in the water and Goldfinch called from the trees above our heads
and our first of many Cormorants flew over.
From the hide we watched Tufted Duck, Gadwall while
David pointed out a huge flock of Lapwing circling
over the Tack Piece, he then spotted a small flock of Fieldfare
as they flew past. A flyover Herring Gull was
the last sighting here so we set off heading for the Tower Hide on the way we
found Blue Tits, Redwings, Magpie, Carrion Crow,
Chaffinch, House Sparrow, mostly
seen from the Willow Hide. Next stop the Knot Hide where we added Greylag Goose, Wigeon and Teal
to the days list. From the Tower Hide 100’s of Golden
Plover were scattered over all the fields and a few Shelduck were in the scrape. By this time, I had
set up my telescope the first bird I found was a Tundra
Bean Goose there was 4 here and 16 in all over the whole site, This is a
species of bird I have not seen since 2007 and then they were just Bean Geese
and not sub-divided into Taiga and Tundra which happened in 2017. Barnacle, Ross’s and Canada
Geese were all found also many 100’s of Dunlin
were scurrying amongst all the geese plus a large group of Starlings. David and I were saying that we hadn’t
seen any Cranes, another birder must have
heard us as, he pointed them out in the distance on the riverbank. The next new
sighting of the day again spotted by David was 2 Skylarks.
We then moved to the northern end of the tower overlooking over the Tack
Piece where a Buzzard was sat on a fence and
38 Bewick’s were mostly sleeping also here
were Shoveler, Curlew and Rooks. Time to move on stopping at the Willow hide and here the only new sighting for
the day were 3 Dunnocks under the feeders. We
then moved to the Robbie Garnet Hide where David found Ruff
at least 10 were about as we scanned the area. Next stop was the Rushy where
Pintail and Pochard
were new and walking back to the car for lunch we had a flock of Long Tailed Tits. Eating lunch in the car Black Headed Gulls and Jackdaws
were seen. After lunch we made our way to South Lake, apart from a flock
of Avocets and Black
Tailed Godwits everything else we had already seen. We then headed for
the South Finger stopping off at the Van De Bovenkamp hide where we found a White Fronted Goose in a field behind the hide. Next
stop was the Kingfisher Hide and the only new bird here was a Little Grebe in the channel. The Zeiss hide was
our last stop no new water birds but Woodpigeon and
Stonechat were new birds. Time to go and
walking back to the car a Kestrel flew by
and a male Pheasant was in one of the pens.
Final sighting of the day was a Blackbird. A
good day with 59 species seen 21 being year ticks.
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| Woodpigeon - Slimbridge (Bath Birdwatcher) |
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