wag-fest

right i promise last 'fest'type post on this blog but today was certainly the day of wagtails
19/09/09
at bewdley in the late mourning early afternoon i was very privalidged to watch 3 yellow wagtails,2 grey and 4 pied wagtails under the bridge in the town centre,not the usual place to find a yellow wag,but i suppose passage birds can turn up anywhere.
later that evening after the earlswood job i got to my usual place at upton warren but as it wasent long before dark(less than an hour) we went for the flashes as a potential life tick was there,a little stint.
at the sailing pool a ton of wagtails were flying around calling over the car park,and i didnt know why.on the south shore i reallised why,they were roosting in trees between the lake and the car park.a few seconds after a wagtail zipped from the lake edge and the short tailed(in wagtail terms) yellow bird was imidiatly identified as a yellow wagtail my 4th for the day.a few squeals from the hen pool allerted me to a water rail but i carried on,at the brook spliting area,i saw a raptor perched on the dead tree,i raised my bins and there was a male kestrel,it stood theer for a good few minuites then flew off over the hen pool,

after about 30 mins in the hide and not having seen the little stint or the whinchats i was wondering if they would show.then a call from my dad telling me to look at the curlews feet,i swung my bins over there and there it was a juv little stint,doing what all the books say,feeding around the feet of other waders.in this case the largest wader next to one of the smallist,so you can imagine the size difference.despite trying it was too dark to get a film/photo so nothing along that line im afraid.for some reason then i decided to scan the telephone pole to see if the buzzare was still on there,it was but a small movement distracted me after locking onto the bird i found it was one of the whinchats,fromjust an houror so watching this isnt a bad total.highlights here were:

1 shelduck

1 water rail

75c lapwing

1 LITTLE STINT(LIFER)

4 green sand

12+ curlew

20+ snipe

100c BHG's

1 tawney owl briefly near farm buildings

50c pied wag(roost)

1 yellow wag

1 whinchat

1 cetti's warbler

MB

life list-192(latest little stint)

upton warren list-127(latist barnicle goose,see later post)