A Great Weekends Birding!

Hi readers I return with another post on my birding experiences last Sunday. The wet, rain, and cold is still hitting us hard but we powered through it again in hope of getting a few good birds in the bag. This post covers the weekends birding beginning on the 28th of Feb hopefully you enjoy the read.

28/02/15- Today wasn't a day for birding but we still had a bit of luck almost instantly, me and my friend were travelling up to Stoke for the day and almost instantly as we left on our travels a Red Kite flew out over the field next to Linthouse Lane, it was unexpected to see the bird but it is the last two Red Kites I have seen that have been unexpected and flying over fields in the Mids. Lets hope we begin to get more sightings like this in the future. On the way back from Stoke we called into Gailey for a quick look around and had some luck. Plenty of birds were showing well around, a tone of Tufted Ducks were on the sailing lake, the odd Great Crested Grebe was around as well as plenty of Cormorant, and Grey Herons. 3 Greylag Geese were also flying around during our visit. A single Oystercatcher also flew over the sailing lake which was a nice bird to see this early on in the year. What's more a single male Goldeneye also showed well on the sailing lake something I don't think I have seen at Gailey before hand.

29/02/15-  So our day actually started off pretty nice, the sun was shining and down the Sandwell Valley hide things were actually warm for a change. It was another nice morning spent in the hide a total of 4 Buzzards were out using the thermals throughout the morning along with a Sparrowhawk to. Duck numbers were quite good on Sunday 33 Goosander were around along with good numbers of Pochard and Wigeon. The male Pintail was on the marsh as usual also. A single female Goldeneye also made an appearance which was an interesting find seen as the day before it had been a male bird, it seems we have some good movement of a couple of Goldeneye coming into Forge Mill Lake lately. It was a lovely morning in the hide again, it was actually warm for a change I would even go as far as saying slightly hot in there. Lapwing numbers were quite high with 60+ birds around which is always food to see. Other than that it was a pretty normal visit to the hide.

Flying Black Headed Gull.

Canada Goose near the hide.

Feeding Coot. 

On the walk back from the hide to the car we noticed a very friendly Robin so I took the opportunity to get some photographs, while taking them I noticed it had a couple of rings on its legs, on the left leg as you will see in the photo the bird has a purple ring on its leg and on the left a normal metal ring. I have no idea how to find where the bird was from so if anyone knows let me know it would be interesting to find out. There is a possibility it could have been ringed in the Valley which would be interesting to find.

The lovely looking Ringed Robin. 

So as the day continued the weather began to take a turn for the worst but hoping the weather would somehow improve we carried on to our next location. Doxey Marshes the site where I saw my first and still only Bittern back in the beginning of 2011, yes for that reason I will always love walking around there because it brings back good memories. Anyway I planned to search for Water Rail on the way around but it was absolutely tipping it down so we were more focused on running to the Octagon hide as quickly as possible. The bird we were in search of was a lifer for me in the form of Water Pipit, I haven't ever got round to going for one so we got to Doxey. On our walk around we had a good few species including a year tick in the form of a Shellduck plenty of Teal were also feeding all across the areas we walked around. As we got to the Octagon hide as I believe its called we also got nice views of a Little Egret on one of the pools showing well, we walked down the pathway to the left of the hide in hope of seeing one of the Pipits but ended up with the wrong species of Pipit, a Meadow Pipit was repeatably showing well perched in the same bush. Along with that we had a few more Teal, a Sparrowhawk, and a good group of Pied Wagtails also showing very well. We also had views of a very close up Reed Bunting at one point I almost stepped on it thats how close it was.

Anyway although we gave it our best shot we couldn't manage to see the Water Pipits so we dipped again on this one, I have to say we haven't been to successful this year so far hopefully it begins to pick up soon. That's the end of this weeks post I'm afraid, another post should be up soon, I still have a lot of revision to do so bear with me with the posts I am trying to put a post up as often as I can but my work does come first that's just the way it has to be.

Thanks for reading and have a good week all- WB