Birding today

Hi readers, me and Dad went out to do some birdwatching as usual today, we had little success in terms of the particular species we were in search of (Wheatear) but we still had a few good birds. We first decided to have a look round Essington Quarry Pool in hope of seeing the female Wheatear that had been spotted in the week, we had no success but the walk around gave us a few good birds including Chiffchaff and Skylark they may not be Wheatear but to me there is plenty of time to try and get one for the year and I was happy with everything else we saw. One surprise that was on the pool was a pair of Goldeneye I can't remember seeing goldeneye at this site so they were a nice bird to see in the area, anyway here's our full sightings list from the site,

Essington quarry Pool- Wigeon x1 (fem), Tufted Duck 10+, Goldeneye x2, Skylark 3+, Little Grebe x1, Buzzard x3, Chiffchaff x1 (another one was calling),  Fieldfare 10+.

A small but quite good list from the site I have noticed that wintering duck numbers are now beginning to fall which hopefully means we will be getting some more summer migrants coming through soon. After looking round Essington quarry Pool we decided to take a look round Chasewater, the site was very quiet with only a few Black headed Gulls around and very little else to watch, looking at the water levels at Chasewater they have risen quite a lot which to me would make it harder for any waders to breed on the site and even feed there simple because there is no real land for them to stay on. Here's our sightings list from Chasewater,

Chasewater- Great crested Grebe x1, Black Headed Gull 20+, Mallard 10+, Canada Goose 5+, Coot 5+, Pied wagtail x1.

You can see for Chasewater things were very quiet today, me and dad did discuss Chasewater and how in our eyes it is more of a winter birding site rather than a spring and summer, this is mainly because Gulls come in their thousands to Chasewater in the winter months and in a way give birders something to look at while other sites are quiet in the winter which to me isn't so much of a bad thing because some birdwatching sites are only good for certain times of the year and this makes them more of a challenge at other times of the year which can be either bad or good depending on what type of birder you are.

After a brief look round Chasewater we decided to finish days birding by taking a look around Clayhanger which did turn out to be the most productive site of the day with a few good birds popping up. One of these birds was a Green Sandpiper that flew from the marsh, I was very happy with seeing this bird because it was another year tick for 2013 and that can only be a good thing, I was disappointed with the lack of summer migrants such as Sand Martin, Swallow, and House Martin I usually look forward to watching the masses of Herundines flying around Ryder's Mere but it looks as if they still haven't arrived yet, I did however look at today's bird news and x4 Sand Martin turned up at Gailey today so hopefully things will finally start to pick up soon. Anyway here's our full sightings list from Clayhanger today,

Clayhanger-

Ryder's Mere- Skylark 2+, Canada Goose x2, Black headed Gull 30+, Reed Bunting x1, Mallard 5+, Jackdaw x2.

Clayhanger marsh- Goosander x2, Green Sandpiper x1, Teal 5+, Mallard 10+, Mute Swan x1, Grey Heron x1.

Again another small list but I think the most productive. Anyway thats all for this post everyone I should be posting next weekend with some birding travels.

Thanks for reading, have a good week all- WMBB