Urban Oasis, Hiding a Rarity!

12/10/14- 

Another day another twitch. With the birdguides app down I had been lost in a world where I had to search about the Internet to find any reports something I hadn't been doing properly for a while now. Usually I see something on birdguides and for example if it was in Staffordshire I would know to head straight for Staffordshire Bird News (blog). I've mainly being using Twitter for bird news lately and I caught something exciting in the form of a lifer for me and not to far away either. The bird in question was a GREY PHALAROPE something I certainly hadn't seen and something significant with it being so far inland. So Sunday arrived and we took a week away from Sandwell Valley to take a look at the bird for a while. 

So we got over to Winterbourne house presumably an Edwardien household and a stunning place at that, it cost us £5.50 each so if you want to go and see the bird that's the only real way you can go and see it. Still an easily justifiable price to pay for a great bird like this. We made our way through the gardens and kind off ended up guessing where to go we had a map from the main office but who follows maps nowadays? We found our way around quite quickly and we walked down to find a group of birders looking out at Edgebaston Pool and there it was the GREY PHALAROPE quite distant but looking stunning in its plumage. The bird actually came quite close and gave us a nice view before flying to the far side of the lake. 

It was quickly and constantly feeding. I noticed it literally spun around in a 360 degrees angle quite a lot, I'm not sure if this has been observed before but I reckon it was a feeding tactic, it was ruffling the ground under its feet and forcing pond life up to the surface so it could then eat them, that's just a presumption if anyone knows anything other than that then let me know. Interesting behaviour none the less and always good to see some interesting behaviour. 

We decided to stick around for a while after everyone else had left and kept watching the bird. While we were watching the bird I took my eye away from the scope for a bit and a Peregrine Falcon darted directly down at super speed towards the pool, I'm guessing it went for a coot or something along those lines but it went down so quickly you can only appreciate the speed of the fastest travelling animal in the world truly when you have seen it and we saw it! I did get worried for our Phalarope however if Peregrines are visiting the pool regularily then it stands a chance the Phalarope could be a target, just like the Upton Temincks Stint was. However the Phalarope does seem well aware of its surroundings and it sticks very close to the reeds so although it's pure white colour does stand out on a brown mercy pool as it stays near to the reeds it would be very hard for a Peregrine to take it so hopefully the bird stays with us. A couple of Kingfisher also flew by a close proximity and gave great views. 

A real Urban Oasis. 

We had a good look round Winterbourne house and gardens, now I will confess I'm not a plant person and never have been, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate interesting plants and flowers when I come across them, I like a Cactus's and plenty of them were about in some of the greenhouses, I won't pretend to be an expert on plant and flowers because I'm really not. The house was also interesting to walk around, some interesting information about the big family that lived there once and some nice exhibits to have a look round. We had a look in what I presume to be the children's room and it had to be the creepiest thing I have ever seen, rocking horses and toys littered around, it just placed me in an episode of Most Hauted. 

So a nice visit to a new area for us, a stunning bird to see what more could you ask from a day. Some of you may remember me mentioning me breaking my tripod a while back, well I got a new one and well I broke that too to cut a long story short. So I reverted back to my old tripod that still appears to be useable it's just broken. That's two tripods in one year, the first breakage was done by me falling onto my tripod and snapping one of the links on the legs, it was a funny moment but ones of those moments where you have to laugh to hide the fact that you've just broken something, a funny story nine the less. 

Again that's it for this post, I will try and do one of those topic posts whenever I get the chance to get one done, got a lot of coursework to get done at the moment so bare with me I will try to post as often as I can. Again thanks for reading there could be a post at anytime soon, I will tweet out when one is up so look out for that. 

Thanks for reading and have a nice week all- WMBB