Birding today

Hi all, Me, John Holian, Sharon Holian, and Chaz Mason went birding around Staffordshire today in hope of early year ticks.

Firstly we went to Upper Longdon in search of the great grey Shrike that has been there for a while now, we did see the bird which was a great start to the day. Here's our main sights from Upper Longdon-

Upper Longdon- Great Grey Shrike x1, Raven x1 (poss more), Chaffinch x4, Mistle Thrush x1, Great spotted Woodpecker x1.

After seeing the Shrike we decided to take a look at the Dunstall area, I hoped to get some more year ticks and see Mandarin in the wild for the first time. Here's our main sightings from Dunstall-

Dunstall- Mandarin x2 (Male and Female), Black Swan (Escaped) x1, Mallard 5+, Coal Tit x1, Nuthatch x1, Great Tit x1, Greylag Goose 10+, Canada Goose x1.

After taking a look at Dunstall we took a look at Uttoxeter quarry here's our main sightings from there-
Uttoxeter Quarry- Mallard 10+, Shellduck x1, Lapwing 20+, Goldeneye x2, Cormorant 10+, Pochard x1, Teal x2, Pheasant x2 (one almost fully black), Greylag Goose 20+, Canada Goose 20+, Grey Heron 5+.

We then took a look at Blithfield reservoir-

Blithfield Reservoir- Golden eye 5+, Pintail x2 (Male and female), Tufted duck 5+, Wigeon 20+, Herring Gull x2, Great Black Backed Gull x1, Raven x2 (Tumbling). Great crested Grebe 10+, Treecreeper x1.

And finally we heard news of a Glaucous and Iceland Gull on the top of the ARC overnight building near Kingswood pool, the lucky thing was that the gulls were sitting beside each over which gave us a great opportunity to compare them seen as they are similar birds. One thing that was pointed out to me by Chaz and John is the length of the tail feather's of each bird, the Iceland Gulls tail feather's seem much longer than the Glaucous's, also the Glaucous Gull is a much more larger and bigger bird whereas the Iceland Gull is smaller and looks a lot more slender than the Glaucous Gull. It was great to see the birds beside each over giving us a chance to compare them.

I was going to upload some photos of the escaped Black swan at Dunstall but the photo uploader doesn't seem to be working. Also seen as the blog has been running for a while now any additional comments to posts and how I could make the blog better would be helpful, so if you have any comments you can ever comment on one of the blog posts or just send me an email (contact me page).

Thanks for reading.

Also thanks to John for driving us round today.