Your Green and You have a Dark Belly.

Hi readers, its time for another installment of birding experiences from myself. What excitement do we have this week I hear you ask. Well the day began as a quiet one we decided to pay our last 2014 visit to Sandwell Valley and spent the morning in the hide. I went straight for the tea this morning, things were cold the windows were shut and coats and gloves were on. The Cold doesn't usually affect me to much but it today. Anyway the morning was pretty quiet the drake Pintail was residing to the left of the hide early morning before moving out onto Forge Mill Lake later on towards midday. In terms of wildfowl we had over 80 Tufted Ducks hiding underneath the trees as well as a few Pochard, Teal, and Shoveler. Plenty of Snipe were around as usual showing all around the island and to the left of the hide. A Water Rail called late morning but as usual we couldn't spot the bird, we know they are around its just difficult to catch them when they are showing. A Kingfisher seen by Bob also flew through earlier on in the morning. Goosander seem low in numbers only a few were around throughout the morning. Other than that it was actually a pretty quiet visit to the hide this morning, but it was good to enjoy the last visit to the hide of 2014 in a relaxing fashion.

So we began driving out of the car park and then we look up into the trees right next to the temporary center and see four stunning Ring Necked Parakeets feeding in the trees, at first we kept our distance but soon realized we actually had to go past them to get out of the Car park, so we drove slowly towards them, and they did not move and inch. The bird was right above out heads showing extremely well, and then we had an even better view when two of the birds flew down to the feeders opposite the center. I have never seen these birds so well, and I managed to get some of the best pictures I have taken in a while now with the great views we managed to get.

Stunning Ring necked Parakeet.

Again a stunning Ring Necked Parakeet. 

Ring Necked Parakeet on the feeders.

Ring Necked Parakeet.

Ring Necked Parakeet. 

As you can see from the pictures some great views of the Parakeets were had, hopefully they decide to use the near center feeders as a regular feeding spot because we will begin to get views like this in the future. So where next I hear you ask well we decided to go and have a look at a goose subspecies for the afternoon over in Worcestershire before visiting family before Christmas. So we moved over to Upper Bittel Reservoir in hope of finding the goose flock where a Dark Bellied Brent Goose had been residing, although the bird hadn't been reported in a while we still fancied our chances at seeing it. On arrival we bumped into a birder who informed us that the bird was still around with a goose flock in one of the fields. So we walked up to the fields in hope of findng this flock. The task in hand was a lot more than we realised, we had to have walked around 4 or 5 different fields trying to find the flock, in the process we caught up with flocks of Yellowhammer and Reed Bunting as well as a few distant but likely Linnets. I stupidly decided against brining my scope and to this day I have no idea why but it only increased walk around the wet muddy fields more, by the way did I mention I was wearing trainers. 

After walking around for an hour or so we heard and then saw the flock of geese fly into a field, we then embarked on a long walk to get nearer to the flock to see the bird in question, on getting closer we caught up with it a nice looking Dark Bellied Brent Goose but it only showed very bridle before going onto the other side of the hill it was on therefore out of view. However we had a nice mixture of Geese to look through two Barnacle Geese were also residing with the group as well as some Canada's as you would expect. We also caught an interesting Greylag x Canada Goose Hybrid within the flock, it was a clear hybrid between these two species and was very interesting to look at. 

Anyway I hoped to right a little more on is post however a family passing has kept my mind on other things at the moment putting me off writing more, I'm sorry for this but I'm sure you can understand my choice in a difficult time. On a lighter note Chrismas is soon as I'm sure you are all aware, I truly hope you all have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year, the next post you shall get from me is a 2014 birding year summary which I hope to put up on New Years Day or possibly a little later. So stay toned for that post I always enjoy doing them as they allow me to look over a good years birding. 

Thanks for reading and have a very Merry Christmas from WB