What a glorious sunny day, it was very cold but remained dry and sunny from dawn till dusk. We set off from Meare at 8:30am having checked out of the hotel.
We drove 10 mile to Cheddar Reservoir which was flat as mill pond but there was a very cold breeze once were we on the embankment around the water. This did deter us, we quickly found an unexpected Redhead - Smew, it was not far out and associating with a bunch of Tufted Ducks. Other species new for our weekend list were Goldeneye, Common Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull and Raven. We walked a quarter of the way around the circular reservoir looking for Scaup but couldn't any, there were plenty of Wigeon, Common Pochard, Shoveler, Gadwall and about 2000 Eurasian Coots!
 |
| Redhead - Smew and with Tufted Duck below |
Next we visited the Lake at Blagdon where both Lesser and Greater Scaup have been seen in recent weeks. But alas we couldn't find any, again there were plenty of the common ducks and Great Black-backed Gull which was new for us.
We stopped at several places at Chew Valley lake, the first was Heron's Green Bay where we added Ruddy Duck and Common Shelduck to the tally, then we drove round to Herriot's Bridge and found a Grey Wagtail and two Chiffchaffs, both new species for us.
 |
| The group at heron's green bay, Chew Valley lake |
We spent a couple of hours at the visitor's centre where we ate lunch. We found a superb male Goosander there and lots of Goldeneye. Our penultimate walk was taken after we drove up over the mendip hills where a covering of snow lay everywhere. We took a short walk into a wood but only found Coal Tit, Common Buzzard and a Magpie.
 |
| snow on the mendips |
Lastly we followed a bridle-way across some arable fields where we hoped to find a few 'farmland' species. We saw a good number of birds, mainly Common Starling, Rooks, Jackdaws, Carrion Crows and Magpies but also quite a few Fieldfares, Robins, Chaffinches and Redwings. We were delighted to find a small flock of Tree Sparrows as well as Song Thrush, a perched Common Buzzard and a perched Raven. Our last birds of the walk were a bunch of Greenfinches which looked great in the late afternoon sunlight.
We boarded the bus for the last time and set off for Gillingham where the group had to catch their train back to London, along the way we saw huge flocks of Northern Lapwing and afield full of Common Gulls, very impressive numbers.
After I had dropped the group off and was approaching home in North Perrott a barn Owl flew alongside the bus for a short while - a great bird to finish off the weekend.
ADDITIONS TO NEW YEAR LIST
104. Smew
105. Goldeneye
106. Ruddy Duck
107. Goosander
108. Eurasian Chiffchaff
109. Coal Tit
110. Tree Sparrow
111. Barn Owl
No comments:
Post a Comment