Today was a sunny day with a slight chill in the air, the birds appeared to love it!!
The trip got off to a good start on the Rushy seeing the female Lesser Scaup again, this time being able to accurately know which bird it was. Most of the birds on the rushy were asleep as it was mid morning. A Heron slowly walked through the water at the back of the rushy! After a long chat with Warden James Lees (!) I went to the Martin smith hide where a lonely Shelduck sat with its beak under its arm. I moved on the the Robbie Garnett hide where the 7 snow geese were! They were on migration and had stopped off for a few days. An Egret stood alone preening itself. Other birds on the Tack Piece included Shovelers, Gadwalls, Greylag Geese and more Shelduck. The next hide I visited was The South Lake Observatory, there were a lot of gulls including black-headed, and one Lesser Black Backed Gull which can be identified, from its cousin the Greater Black Backed Gull, by the colour of its legs, in this case it had yellow legs which meant it was a Lesser, if it had a brown/orange colour to its legs then it would have been a Greater. Also on South lake there were a lot of Waders over the other side my binoculars I had weren't strong enough to see them so I walked to Hogarth hide which would bring me closer to these mystery waders. on closer inspection they were in fact Black and Bar Tailed Godwits. they had an amazing orange colour on their under side and very long beaks, they were feeding. Then I spotted the most exciting sighting of the day which was two Avocets! This was especially exciting because Avocets are rarely seen in the west of the country. They sifted there beaks gracefully backward and forth searching for food. After watching these for at least half an hour I went home.
