I've got a Hobby, Watching Harriers!

Hi readers, another week another post of birding experiences for me to write up and today has once again been a great days birding, I am writing this on the Sunday night ready to post up tomorrow sometime so I am still very chuffed with the day we had today. I got a call from John Holian on Saturday night, John phoned to let me know he had good views of Marsh Harrier at Aqualate Mere that day and seen as I had never seen one it seemed like a good reason to go up on the next day. So we embarked on our journey to Aqualate feeling hopefully that we would see a Harrier.

We arrived at Aqualate and began the decently long walk to the hide seeing only a few Buzzard.mon arrival in the hide I barely had any time to sit down before a MARSH HARRIER was spotted and when I got it in my bins you could see instantly how stunning these birds are, it was flying to the right had side over the reed bed and showing very well. Over all we had to have seen it up to five times throughout the morning and everytime I couldn't stop looking at the bird. It felt great to see a Marsh Harrier the first time I went to Aqualate a year or two ago I dipped on one that was viewable while I was in the hide, I'm not going to lie that was a very bad morning for me although things improved later in the afternoon with a Red Backed Shrike. I have to say this is a species. I have been desperate to see for ages now, so it felt really great to see my first Harrier with such great views.

Record Shot of the Marsh Harrier!

Great Spotted Woodpecker, Aqualate.

We spent a good amount of time in the hide and got great close up flyby views of Hobby (3 all together) constantly throughout the morning. What's more at one point we had the Marsh Harrier and a large Peregrine in view though our bins, the Peregrine Falcon wasn't to happy to see the Harrier to say the least. So that's four species of bird of prey in one morning and one lifer and a year tick all from sitting in a hide! What's more out on the lake there was a tone of Shovler and a whole host of other wildfowl species. I know Pintail and Wigeon were seen but not by us, we also got quick views of a Marsh Tit a couple of times and also a Great Spotted Woodpecker on the feeders.

Shovler at Aqualate.

So a very successful morning that I personally was very chuffed with. We decided to take a quick look over Gailey Reservoir and managed a few Tufted Duck, Pochard, Little Grebe and Great crested Grebe and also a single Kestrel. Other than that Gailey was quiet. But still willing to keep going we fancied looking somewhere else, originally we planned to head over to Chasewater but then seen as the Motorway entrance was closed we took a detour and ended up closer to Essington Quarru Pool instead. 

Record Shot of the Spotted Flycatcher!

So we moved over to Essington and didn't really expect to see to much overall, how wrong we were. We arrived onto the first field and looked left into some bushes and both instantly got onto a SPOTTED FLYCATCHER showing extremely well in the berry bushes, we kept looking and saw at least three Flycatchers showing very well and feeding regularly. There was at least one Willow Warbler also showing well in these same bushes. We continued our walk and noticed a roost of around 50+ Black headed Gulls with a few others on the main pool. A single eclipse Wigeon was on the main pool also. We managed to see at least 3 Little Grebe and 5+ Greylag Geese. So overall Essington is still looking very good. On leaving we went back to the flycatcher bush and still all three birds were feeding at 16:30pm so they stayed for a while it stands a chance there may be a few still around for the next couple of days. 

So we have come to the end of another post, before writing this I checked my blog stats and noticed I have got over 5000 views in total, this feels really great, it's great to know people are reading my blog and are interested in what I have to say, it's also nice to see people have stuck with me throughout my time blogging. Heres to many more years blogging eh! Hope you enjoyed the post and there should be another this time next week if not before. 

Thanks for reading and enjoy the week all- WMBB