November 12th 2008

I set up a portable moth trap at Brandon Marsh last night and with no intention of hanging around I was out early this morning to inspect the catch and though it dropped to 5 degrees I still managed 5 moths of four species. Light Brown Apple Moth 2, November Moth agg, Yellow-lined Quaker, and Winter Moth. The Barn Owl was out hunting sheep field and the returning Bittern flew across newlands from east marsh but not much else accept plenty of water. Returning back home to drop the gear off I had a Kingfisher at Wolston and on Lawford Heath managed Sparrowhawk, Raven and 6 Tree Sparrow. Once fed and watered it was back out to the pond with brighter skies so intended to do the roost. Bob, Francoise and Ollie found a male Snow Bunting in toft bay and all three took some stunning pictures.

Snow Bunting by Bob Hazell
Unfortunately by the time I arrived it was mobile appearing along toft and farborough bank a couple of time and only giving flight views. Spent 2 hours on farborough spit checking the area for Great-northern Divers and there are now FIVE. This is my highest count actually on the reservoir though I did have 4 on res and 3 flying over west on 16th November 2005. A good area to view them is off draycote bank if the one from farborough bank isn’t performing. As you can tell from Bob’s brilliant photo they can be awesome.

Great-northern Diver by Bob Hazell
Red-necked Grebe spent most of the day by the fishing pontoons so another bird that gave the many photographers a good time though it moved off towards farborough spit mid afternoon when a sailing class got to close to it. Another good bird was the Short-eared Owl found by visiting birders below farborough bank and a draycote year tick for me. Other birds seen were Shag, Siskin 4, Green Woodpecker 2, many Redwing and Fieldfare around the perimeter, Buzzard 2 and a few Linnets and Skylarks. Stayed for the roost and the light finally improving managing the first winter Glaucous Gull from hensborough bank then moved to farborough spit where the smaller gulls due to the north west wind were in very close and found 3 first winter and 2 adult winter Med Gulls amongst the thousands of Black-headed and Common Gulls before they moved in to the main roost.

A poor effort from me of the Red-necked Grebe

Part of the roost and sunset from farborough spit

Richard