Two trips to the Southside

The Safari has been enjoying the many superb pics of the recent Leach's Petrels along our coast - this one by young EM is a real humdinger! And what about these - awesome and a clever trick to get them. Unfortunately the wind didn't stay strong enough long enough or from the right direction for us a to get a pic of the little mites, yes we are a bit disappointed not to add Leach's Petrel to our Year Bird Challenge tally! 

We had to go down to the Southside on family duties on Thursday and to tire Monty out a little before we went visiting we had an hour's mooch around the excellent Lunt Meadows reserve. We say it's excellent but today it was rather quiet. The drive down had got our hopes up for a good morning's birding with a Jay flying over the car and both Buzzard and Kestrel seen close to the roadside in quick succession.

At the first screen the cattle were close by, Monty couldn't see them but he could sure smell them and was rather 'interested'! There is a small herd of Redpoll that undertake conservation grazing to create hummocky grassland for breeding waders and mud wallows for the birds to feed in.

We're not sure what species of Mayweed it is but the 'field' looked really beautiful and the cattle contrasted very nicely against it. with this fellow so close we weren't going to hop over the fence to investigate either and it's probably a good job he couldn't see Monty behind the screen too.

At the back behine the distant cows a small hint of movement caught our eye. A Brown Hare had poked it's head up out of a bit of a ditch for a look-around - our first of the year.

Something spooked it and it shot off at a slow gallop for a hare but a bit quick for us and the camera.

Bird-wise there was only a small flock of Lapwings on the pool and they were soon flushed by something unseen and flew over to the far pool - nothing for it but to follow them. 

We passed a couple of Red Admirals and a Small White butterfly on the way.

The sun came out at the next screen and nicely lit up the Lapwings which had now joined a larger flock.

With all the strong winds we expected there might have been a more exotic wader from more northern latitudes or even North America in the Lapwing flock or at least a Ruff, but no there were just a handful of Snipe secreted around the marginal vegetation.

There were a few gulls loafing in the shallows and snoozing on the small muddy island. Mostly Herring Gulls,  a couple of Lesser Black Backs and four Black Headed Gulls, but with the Black Heads was an obvious odd-man-out - a first winter Mediterranean Gull...Result!

A Water Rail was far too quick for us as it legged it across the mud below the screen, that was about the best of the rest and with time getting near to visiting time we legged it too.

We had one trick up our sleeve, close to the reserve is a barn which holds a pair of Little Owls. It's always worth the two minute detour even if we'd done it unsuccessfully a few times before - today was our lucky day! There in the dark recesses of the barn was a Little Owl (174, YBC #148) sitting on a beam and fortunately against the pale timber so a pic was possible for our Year Bird Challenge. Good to see one as we totally dipped out on this species in 2014 and 2016.

Now time was pressing but there are two roads you can go by but in the short run we chose to retrace our steps right rather than continue left. A good choice, turning off the 'main' road down the lane we used to call Ratty Road when we were birding round here on our bike many years ago a family of Grey Partridges (175) flew almost over our bonnet. Now had we been on our bike we could have just stopped but in the car we had to drive nearly half a mile to find somewhere to turn round and hope they'd still be in view. Only one was but maybe fortunately it was one of the adults, the well grown chicks were nowhere to be seen in the recently harvested field, they must have gone into the ditch at the side of the little wood. But how annoying it should stand behind the only remaining stalk of stubble in the whole field! (YBC #149).

Such exquisitely marked birds it's a real shame they are now so rare and generally hard to come by when in our youth we practically used to trip over them in these same fields. 

All too soon it followed the rest of the family into the ditch with a last look over its shoulder.

The following day we were taken by CR to the big reserve Martin Mere (there we've said it - we normally refer to it as the reserve we don't mention by name due to the similarity with 'our' reserve Marton Mere)

With a gentle wind just west of north this was going to be a Pink Footed Goose day and so it transpired as we saw a couple of flocks at height heading that way when we dropped Monty off at his minders. More were seen on the drive down.

The wink-wink sound of Pink Footed Geese wafted down from on high as small flocks began to arrive

Landing gear down - for the first time in 750 miles?

More and more arrived in larger and larger flocks too...spectacular!

They were landing out of sight in one of the reserve's fields away from the hide we were in so we had a little walk.

The next hide we stopped in overlooks a small pool which had a couple of Black Headed Gulls that were fishing for 3-Spined Sticklebacks with some success.

They were joined by a Heron which was successful too, many times! It all seemed a bit too easy and not good if you were a Stickleback!

Look at that - it must have somehow caught two at once but ended up dropping one - lucky fish!

Also on the pool briefly were a pair of Gadwall 

and a couple of Coot.

We didn't get a pic of the lovely Moorhen and totally missed the very brief visit by the Kingfisher.

Moving down to the farthest hide we searched through the scattered flock of Lapwings 

for a Ruff and eventually found one, a long way off. So far away this pic is enlarged by 200%

At long last Ruff (176) goes on the year list, how come it's taken until mid-September to come across one of these? And it just about qualifies for inclusion on our Year Bird Challenge bringing up our 150 species photographed. hopefully we'll be able to get a much better replacement pic before the year end - won't we?

Another Kingfisher zipped past along the dyke but didn't stop, while in the the dyke that joins this one an injured over-summering Whooper Swan won't have long for its mates to arrive from Iceland, they're usually not too far behind the Pink footed Geese.

The wander round the rest of the reserve didn't give us much more of note so we decided to cut our losses and head to Mere Sands Wood, a cracking little reserve we often helped out at during its formative years in the early 80s.

The main feeding station was quiet except for a couple of Chaffinches and a family of Dunnocks so we didn't stay long and anyway our main 'target' was away across the far side of the reserve. On the way we came across a nice Nuthatch (didn't get those here in the 80s) and a recently fledged still mostly spotty Robin at the woodland feeding station, no sight nor sound of the recent Willow Tit, the first here for a number of years although they were regular in the 80s.

A flock of Long Tailed Tits entertained us briefly at the first hide down this end of the lake but it was the next hide we wanted to be at. It was already full of eager photographers who told us the Kingfisher had been about but not showing at all well. Several perches have been positioned over the water to enable photographers to get 'the' shot...providing the bird behaves...which it wasn't today.

We waited a while hearing Jays shrieking in the distance until someone gave the call 'Kingfisher'...it landed on the most distant perch almost totally obscured by the tall heads of Willowherb from our seat. No good - it had gone by the time we'd managed to get the camera to focus on the perch rather than the intervening vegetation - it wouldn't have been 'the' shot either - too distant. There'll be more opportunities later in the year when the vegetation has either been cut or died back for the winter.

Leaving the gang of photographers to their wait we continued round the reserve which being mid-afternoon was pretty quiet. We settled in the empty hide overlooking the other large lake and tried to get some dragonfly pics without success - using our phone as they were too close for the long lens! We'd got a Common Darter on the bridge at the reserve entrance but that was settled on the handrail.

This time we were after flight shots - yes with the phone! - as the dragons flew back and forth around the vegetation just outside the window.

We only managed a couple of very blurry shots one of which might have been OK if the dragon had been within the depth of field - how annoying.

Heading back for a last blast at the Kingfishers we passed an interesting looking fungus - the reserve has a superb variety of fungi but they are a group we know little about so if anyone out there can identify this one we'd be grateful. We don't even possess a field guide for fungi - we did have one but it seems to have disappeared off our bookshelf sometine in the distant past.

A Raven 'cronking' overhead was another species we wouldn't have dreamed of finding here in the 80s - had to go a long way to the nearest ones at that time. 

No further Kingfisher action was reported by the photographers and we missed the opportunity for a great Jay-in-flight shot as it flew across the lake but didn't land in the nearby tree as it had apparently done earlier. The only bird about was a moulting drake Shoveler which has a face a little bit like a Yankee Blue Winged Teal. It was preening like mad and like a dog chasing its tail it spun round and round rather comically trying to nibble those hard to reach parts.

A funny looking sheet rainbow heralded the downpour that would soak us on the way back to the car - should have got a phone pic of that it was a bit weird, never seen anything like it before. Despite the short sharp shower, missing an Osprey and only seeing one of the four Marsh Harriers in the morning it was a great day out on safari.
Where to next? It's the weekend so anything could happen anywhere!
In the meantime let us know who's reaching those hard to reach places in your outback.