Birding today.

Hi readers, today me and Dad visited 2 birding sites Sandwell Valley and Upton Warren. We were going to go straight to Upton Warren but we had commitments at Sandwell that needed to be done first. Many of you may have heard of the Garden birds survey run by the RSPB, the purpose of the survey is to get an accurate number of different birds visiting peoples gardens in the UK.

I took part in this survey at Sandwell Valley today. We had quite a few different birds while taking part in the survey, our main sightings list is as following,

RSPB Sandwell Valley- Willow Tit x1, Snipe x1, Bullfinch 5+, Greenfinch x3, Great Tit x4, Blue Tit x2, Reed Bunting x1, Robin x2.

A small sightings list but I hope that it helps with the survey. While the survey was taking place a team of bird ringers were working hard to ring as many birds as they could. I was told that 4 different Willow Tits had been ringed today which did surprised me because I only thought one was around on the reserve and that's the one on the feeders but I guess I was wrong with that one.

Now many of you who view the blog regularly will know that I have been wanting to go and see the Upton Warren Bittern, I was very disappointed when me and Dad found that it hadn't been seen for quite a few weeks now, but to me the only thing to blame for that is a shortage of bird news from Worcestershire, the only site I'm aware of is Birdguides but to get details of where the bird is you have to pay for it. But despite not seeing the Bittern we had some other great birds to look at, here's our main sightings for the day,

Sailing Pools- Goldcrest x3, Redwing x1, Mallard 5+, Buzzard x1.

Flashes- Curlew x9, Teal 10+, Mallrd 5+, Lapwing x1, Mute Swan x2.

Moors Pools- WATER RAIL x1, Cormorant 20+, Lapwing 20+, Greenfinch 5+, Reed Bunting x2, Long tailed Tit 5+, Green Woodpecker x1, Teal 10+, Lesser black Backed Gull x1, Black headed Gull 10+, Pochard x3, Great crested Grebe x1, Jack Snipe x1, Snipe x2, Buzzard x1, Grey Heron x1, Great spotted Woodpecker x1.

Without a doubt the Water Rail was the top bird for today, it showed really well and was in front of the hide and I got great views of it. Another bird that we saw today was the Jack Snipe, I haven't seen one of these for a number of years so it was a good year tick for me. It took a while to show and offered reasonable views when it showed.

Got some good shots of the Water Rail and was surprised that the bird was coming so close as they are usually very secretive birds, in fact a Rabbit did chase it off at one point. There should again be some topical posts in the week so look out for those.

Thank you for reading have a good week all- WMBB.