again to the moors first and my regular journey around the north moors and down to whichever hide i fancy.today i chose the east hide again as it gave us the greatist potentiol for seeing snipe which yesterday there was a complete lack of then to be saved by 3 at the flashes. nothing much on the north moors again but the cettis warbler gave its typicle flight view again(we only saw this one but someone had seen 3).on the path to the east hide again i looked for the mealy as it was reported again earlier in the day but again no sign.as we entered the hide i scanned the islands.the 3 shelducks were still there as was the greylag geese(but on the other side of the lake)in a casual manor i asked if the white front was around,to be greeted with the answer 'yes hes over there' while pointing towards the river swalphorpe(hope i spelled it right) and there stood the adult eurapian white front at a lot closer range than yeterday with a few canadas and a very large hydrid(it was quite a bit larger than the canadas)and i got another film
then i started looking for snipe.i counted the pointy bit to the right of the boat first as this is where i see the most snipe.i counted 15 with a bit of room for moreand a jack snipe . i scanned the island slightly to the left of the hide(the one thats very close) and counted 2 then 5 then 7 then a maximum of 10 again leaving room for others.this actually developed into again as 4 birders submitted bids of how many birds there were.while watching the snipe a few teal came close and a little grebe was diving for fish in front of the islands.it came up with one and took a long time to eat it.it was so close i could see it was eating a small roach(i like fishing 2).
the highlights here were
w f goose
2 greylag geese
shelduck 3
15-20 shoveler
3 wigeon (2 m 1f)
15c teal
15-20 pochard
25 snipe
1 jack snipe
1 skylark
1 cettis warbler
now to the flashes:
again there was a lot of lapwings and little else.but the oyc has moved down here before being flushed by something.36 curlew were on show but again there was more on the 3rd flash.but there were 2 things that really suprised me. one was a water rail.at the flashes i need say no more.this i was told is a very rare occurence expeshily where it was in between the 2nd +3rd flash. the little owls again came out to play but remained as motionless as ever.next was something which i didnt expect inside the 'fox proof fence' (doing that finger thing).yeah right a superb big adult fox strolled into view in between the 2nd +3rd flash spooking everything there but the birds on the 2nd flash paid no attention to it.one good thing with this though is that it flushed some snipe which we couldent see before.the shelducks came down again.then just as dusk approached just as we were about to leave a peregrine flew through comin in from the south and leaving to the north flying very low flushing everything and again i got a video
highlights were:
lapwing-a lot
36 curlew
teal-good scattering
snipe-a few
water rail
perigrine
2 shelduck
1 oyc
2 little owls
and the fox
does anydody remember the woodcock i seen uw moors on the last day of last year well guess what one was seen at the moors the next day that pretty much proves the one we saw dont it.
and as of the 1st march the avocets are back at uw can you believe that so early and as i write this that figure has incresed to 2.hopefully its a breeding pair and thaey have another great year at the warren i know ill be seeing them soon
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