Terning to Belvide

1/07/14 (Belvide)

Hi readers, I bet your surprised at me posting during the week, but I am doing it with good reason. I hadn't been home long before I got a call from John Holian explaining that two Roseate Terns had been seen at Belvide today, he also mentioned that he wasn't sure if they were still around but that I should get prepared to rush off for five-ish. I kept an eye on the news and they were still around at five past four so our chances looked likely.

We rushed off quickly taking a longer root to avoid the Que to get onto the motorway which was to be expected at half five in the afternoon with rush hour in full swing, on arrival at Belvide we darted out the car went straight for our scopes and more or less legged it, John mentioned he hadn't seen one in staffs for 30 years or so and I had never seen one so we were both eager to get to the birds at the same time we were also very limited on time which sped us up even more.

We got down to the hide quite quickly and on arrival there they were two ROSEATE TERNS flying around and even fishing, we had some magnificent flybys in front of the hide, I didn't get the best of photos because I was more enthusiastic about watching the birds naturally. After watching them for fifteen minutes or so the birds fly to the further "shingle" island which made them almost impossible to see in my scope specifically. So we decided to head up for a closer and perched view of the birds, we sped round to the far end of the reservoir and got into the furthest hide, we still had quite distant views of the terns so decided to walk further up the path to get a better view.

On arrival further up the path one of the birds appeared to vanish, with the other bird facing opposite us, I had a look through Johns scope and you could see the bird really well, really helping out with learning about this new species for me. They were very smart looking birds I gotta say, well worth the walk round the reservoir all the way to the far end. Looking at the news we really timed in perfectly, we had to have pulled out of Belvide at 18:50 when the birds were reported to have left so well timed for us overall.

I do have a photo of the bird but as I am writing this I haven't even uploaded it onto my Laptop yet so don't expect an award winning piece of photography, but its a nice record shot that will do well as a memory.

Record shot of ROSEATE TERN 

Thanks for reading there should be a post this weekend and enjoy the week all- WMBB