Thrashing Warwickshire- Hume's Warbler, Waterbirds and a Sparrow

16/02/14
With the sun shining, and spring truly been in the air i was getting a little worried. All of our wintering birds would soon be getting an urge to head back north to their breeding grounds, and time was fast running out to find them!
With that in mind, the decision to head to one of the bigger of the regions reservoirs was taken!

It has been such a long time since i had visited Draycote Water, it has been rather 'quiet' for a very long period but this winter it really has pulled in a few goodies!

Heading along the M42 it would have been rude to have not dropped into Hopwood on the way over, and the GREAT GREY SHRIKE was soon located feeding in its usual spot near the fenceline, distant as ever.

Not too much longer after, we were pulling into the car park atop the hill overlooking the huge expanse of open water that is Draycote. Actually it was almost the exact spot that we parked on my very first visit! Much to my approval however, the weather was far nicer, and not freezing cold as you expect with this place, and soon i was walking around to Rainbow corner in bright sunshine!

It was while scanning a large flock of Tufted Duck and Goldeneye from on of the fishermans car parks i picked up a small, pale duck at the back of the flock. A few seconds after and it was in my scope, and i was able to confirm that i was watching the rather pretty 1st winter male LONG-TAILED DUCK in the distance.

Moving a little further around, we were treated to great views of a few of the large numbers of Goldeneye, many of which were displaying and calling loudly from very close in to the shore, regardless of the huge numbers of walkers and screaming children! What stunning ducks!

Walking even further around, we were soon adjacent to the LONG-TAILED DUCK, and we were treated to absolutely stunning views of this seaduck as it happily swam about with the Tufted Ducks and Coots! Surreal!

As regular readers will know, my previous experience of 'LTD' as they are affectionately initialised to, was of a female bird which was so far away it was nothing more than a dot in the scope, so to have one this close was amazing, and i truly savoured every second!

Walking a little bit further a single bird sitting atop the hedgeline proved to be a TREE SPARROW! A bird that is now sadly very rare within my home county of Worcester, and therefore it was great to catch up with one of these stunning red-heads! It sat up on the hedge for a minute or so before it flew off into the adjacent fields! It really is hard to imagine that i used to get this species in my urban garden just outside Dudley! How long ago that seems now, as now i perhaps only see a couple of these birds a year!

With this corner of the reservoir being very productive, i was reluctant to leave, but soon we headed off around onto Farbourgh bank, and about half way along a small flock of Goldeneye appeared, and while scanning them as they flew in a 'white' duck was tagging along with them. I was shouting out SMEW as a stunning looking adult drake flew in, which was greeted by some odd looks from some walkers by, but luckily the bird then went onto drop onto the water just in front of us!

A little bit of swimming.

Followed by a little bit of a stretch

And then one of the motorboats from the sailing club approached, and soon after sent the bird flying a long distant to the north shore of Toft bay!

For the sake of complete-ness, we continued up the bank until the point where we could scan into Toft bay distantly, the Smew was located with the same flock of Goldeneye, and further scanning revealed the last 'target' of the day when the GREAT-NORTHERN DIVER swam across, preened and flapped on the far side of the bay. Having had decent views of many 'Great- Northerns' this year, i chose to turn back to the car.

With a fair bit of daylight still left, we chose to drive over to Coleshill to get some views of the HUME'S WARBLER, which was showing well upon arrival, meaning i could properly study its plumage. I later moved up to the road bridge where i was treated to amazing views of this stunning Leaf Warbler as it fed in tree's down to about 15ft in front of me, where i tried to get some digi-binned pictures before it dropped into denser vegetation! 

While standing here, the similarly long staying Siberian Chiffchaff was calling, and also showing briefly in tree's on the opposite side of the road, further adding to the warbler interest of the site! And even more than that, as i was trying to relocate either of the warblers a small flock of 9 Redpoll flew in and landed upon a silver birch in the centre of the clearing, and when i got on them, was struck by 4 very bright, icy couloured Mealy Redpolls! A little further scrutiny revealed each of those 'pale' 4 also had nice white wing bars. One in particular was particularly pale, and really was a looker! We stuck around until the light started to fade, but both warblers refused to show, but the Redpoll's stayed on view, but somewhat more distantly.

What a day in the midlands! As i have said before, i can't remember many winters where birding has been this good around the midlands, with decent birds present all over the place! Lets hope it continues into the spring, summer and autumn!
MB

Regional MEGA!

26/01/14

Wow!

What is going on this winter!

Birding around the Midlands has actually been really decent this winter, with Two-Barred Crossbills, Glossy Ibis, Seaduck, the usual array of scarce Gulls and more than a fair share of Great-northern Divers!

It really does all seem to be going on. And it was on the 25th, while our crew from Worcestershire was thrashing North Norfolk, a text informed us to the presence of another regional MEGA!

Like Two-Barred Crossbill, this really was up there with the rare of the rare of Midlands birds, being only the 2nd ever in the WMBC area and a first for Warwickshire!

The temptation proved to hard to resist, i knew missing this one would be severely annoying, so, after sitting through the early morning rain until mid-day at home, and letting the hardcore of Midlands Birding, that being, Martyn, Kay and the man of the hour, Mr Dave Hutton, the finder of this superb eastern gem to relocate the bird, i finally headed out once the skies started to clear.

An hour or so later, we were pulling up near the famous Edison road outflow, where the HUME'S LEAF WARBLER had been seen.

First of all, a homage needs to be made to this stunning location! An area of wasteland, strewn with litter and plastered in glutinous mud and overgrown bramble, surrounded on all sides by the Hams Hall industrial estate adjacent to the warm outflow water from the sewage works which feeds into the river.

What a stunning location for the Warbler to choose!

An anxious 30 Minuite wait followed, with no sign of the bird, but i was mid sentence to a local birder when a piercing 'dsu-weet' call emerged from the line of tree's between us and the river. Immediately it was obvious this was the bird we were here to see, emphasised by Martyn's somewhat frantic pointing to his birding companion Kay towards an area of tree's a few meters from where they stood.

Within a few seconds, and having covered only a few meters, the bird flew out of the tree line, and dropped into a block of Bramble in front of me, slowly working its way past through a variety of tree's and bushes.

At this point, plumage detail was hard to see, but as it worked its way down the hedgeline, it started to give slightly longer views, at times spending a fair time feeding in a few spindley hawthorn bushes in the nettle clumps. Here, the crowd was able to scope the bird, and everything supported what i had expected to see. A very cold and washed out 'Leaf warbler' (particularly so on the crown, being a grey colour here), showing the familiar greater covert bar of its close couin the Yellow-Browed warbler, but having a very pale median covert bar, being almost non-existant! Although it is somewhat of a cliche when talking about Humes Warbler, it really did appear as if you were watching a Leaf warbler through clouded Bins.

One of the main attractive points for these excellent Siberian warblers, as well as their obvious beauty, is the ferantic, flitting flycatching behaviour they posess is very appealing, being very restless and busy, much akin to our 'regulus' genus (that being Goldcrest and Firecrest), which are also species i love to watch.

With the crowd having now relaxed, having all had a decent view of the bird it truily became an enjoyable twitch! With many 'familiar faces' being present, the conversation and atmosphere was brilliant. To catch up with so many familiar, old, and new faces is one of the reason i enjoy twitching.

You all know who you are, so i wont bother with that, but thanks all for making this bird ever more sweeter! Cheers to Dave for the find, certainly one of my most enjoyable midlands twitches in a long time!

Lets do it again!

MB