Tuesday 6 November 2012

A Couple of Hours at Upton Warren

So now its getting dark so early we just about managed a couple of hours at Upton on Saturday before it got dark.

Our main objective was to see Water Rail, this is a bird that eludes us all the time, we have only had one sighting in the past 18 months, at Slimbridge, so reading that they seem abundant at UW at the moment we went down, also hoping to see some Redpoll and Brambling if we were lucky.

We went to the new hide at Moors Pool first, to get that all important Coffee in (there's a bit more room in there) We stayed in there about 40 minutes, but no Water Rail, plenty of activity on the feeders though:





Bullfinch, Siskin, Greenfinch, Blue & Great Tits, Blackcap and Pheasant were very busy and gave me some nice shots.

So after Coffee we popped into the concrete hide. Two friendly chaps told us the Water Rail had been out all the time whilst they were waiting for the Kingfisher. But of course even though we waited and waited, nothing!! A nice female Reed Bunting did oblige though:
A Lesser Black Backed Gull being chased by a Black-headed Gull proved entertaining:

The Cormorant must be thinking he should have got the fish first!
A Robin posed nicely:
and the Cormorants were taking in the last of the Sun:
So we gave up on the Water Rail and decided for a last twenty minutes over at the Lapwing Hide to see the Snipe and see if we could get a better view of the Pintail that we had seen in the distance from the New Hide.

We did see the Snipe, however the Jack Snipe were in hiding. Good job we had good views of a Jack up at Cresswell the other week. The Pintail was a little closer, but still not great views. A good display was had by a Kestrel:
The light was really going now so not a great photo.
So that was it, 30 species for a couple of hours isn't bad, not the ones we were after though, but that's birding for you!

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