An early Christmas present.

Hi readers, today marked the day of a long awaited successful twitch, although this year I have seen rarer species there is one bird I have waited to see for around 2 years. And when one turned up in the West Midlands literally ten minutes away from where I live we couldn't miss on the chance to see it. The species in question is of course the Glossy Ibis. Yesterday John Holian gave me a call saying he was watching it and advised I should try and get down to see it, however I couldn't yesterday so was very worried that I would see the bird. But this morning a Glossy Ibis was seen flying south from Chasewater Reservoir which means it was heading directly towards the Pelsall area where it had been for the past week or so. Therefore I was quite sure it would be about.

We first checked the field where John had seen the bird yesterday on Foundry Lane but had no luck so we moved up the road towards Goscote Lane where the bird had been spending most of its time. On arrival we parked quite awkwardly just across from the Donna Cooper Memorial Garden entrance, we started looking in a field opposite the memorial entrance and with no luck we were thinking of where else to look. And then a friendly birder came along and explained that the bird was about right at the end of the memorial path and was very easy to see. So we began a very fast walk down the path, at first we were not to sure exactly how far down the path the bird was, and began to become worried the we wouldn't see the bird, but spurred on with the possibility of seeing the bird we carried on down the path.

We got to the end of the path and I looked up into a pond like puddle in the end field and there it was a stunning GLOSSY IBIS right there feeding in the puddle. We watched the bird for half an hour or so and to be honest it seemed very oblivious to us being there, although we kept our distance so not to spook the bird we were still quite close to the bird and it didn't seem to care at all.

I have to say it a species I have wanted to see in a while, in total I've been for them three times now and on both the first two times we had waited around for hours and not seen the bird but this time the bird was there straight away and easy to see. After seeing the Ibis we contemplated either going to Clayhanger or heading for the Motorway and seen as we had to be somewhere else this afternoon we decided to head for Worcestershire for a shot at the Great Grey shrike which turned out to be a complete failure, in all fairness we had no real idea where the bird was, all we knew was it was in the Hopwood area east of Lower Bittel res on the north side of the B4120, which you may think was perfect instructions but it honestly wasn't. I have the tiniest feeling we did look in the correct field at one point as from pictures on Twitter the surroundings do look similar but there was no sign of the bird where we were so who knows?

Anyway we weren't to disappointed with not seeing the Shrike the Ibis was still in the bag and we were pretty ecstatic with seeing it. One bad thing we saw while looking at the Ibis was a dead Fieldfare, what struck me was that a Fox or bird of prey cannot of hit it there was no blood just the bird sitting huddled up on the floor I can only assume it died because of the cold weather Here are the full sightings from the Glossy Ibis twitch,

Donna Cooper Memorial Garden- GLOSSY IBIS x1, Sparrow Hawk x1, Kestrel x1, Mallard x2, Magpie 10+.

So not to many species around but the Ibis made up for it. We did also get over the Bartley Res for five or ten minutes this evening and had little luck with seeing much a few Canada Geese, a Grey Heron, Lesser Black Backed and Herring Gull and of course Black headed Gulls were the only species of notes, otherwise it seemed very quiet over there. But overall not a bad days birding and it will most likely be the last birding I shall be doing before Christmas this year, on the subject if Christmas I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas this year and of course a happy new year. As well as doing a post next Saturday I will be doing a 2013 sum up post on either New years Eve or day (most likely the first one) so keep an eye out for that one.

Here's a few shots of the Glossy Ibis today hope you all like them,

Glossy Ibis.

Glossy Ibis.

So not a bad days birding, seen as this is likely to be the last proper post before Christmas, MERRY CHRISTMAS! And also take a look at my previous post I need a little help if you would like to do me a Christmas favour. I hope you all have a great Christmas and happy birding, there should be a post next Saturday if not earlier.

Thanks for reading and have a very merry Christmas!- WMBB