100th post

OMG,a milestone reached and a good day it was with about 9000 bird's seen
15/11/09

slimbridge

on the way down had a raven near breadon hill.

with the recent reports of quite scarce/rare birds at slimbridge recently and my desire to get to 200 lifers before the year end,it was a must visit....

went straight for the zeiss hide,and believe this,we cought the tide and the waders were on the lake,kerching,

decided to search the waders for anything different in there,i counted 8 sanderling and 3 knot in the 500c dunlin(note pics only show portion of flock).i was overwhelmed by the activity here, so many birds,but the real spectacle is when one of the greatist raptors goes through,the peregrine.there was a male and a female hunting the dumbles/area in front of zeiss hide,on one occasion the female flew through and put absolutly every wader up.then watchind it flying towards the holden tower a huge,massive flock of lapwings exploded up and i mean massive,there was at least 3000 birds up there and with an extra 1000 in front of me it created an amazing specticle:

(dunlins in flight with a few lapwings)

(all lapwings,view full size for views of small birds again only bit of flock)

(dunlin's,sanderling's and knot's coming in to land)

peregrine
inwith the dunlin's (and other waders mentioned) were a good sized flock of 100c golden plover,6 blackwit were 'hanging/sleeping' with a flock of wigeon/teal,a lone snipe probed the mud and 4 ruffs were prancing around,including a pale adult male and 2 redshank,the flock of barnicle geese was viewed distantly from here and at 12 o clock from the hide the 42 white fronted goose were feeding,a big flock of canadian geese was in the field to the left of the hide,

a water rail shown a few times in front of the hide,the duck numbers were outstanding,about 800 teal and about 300-400 wigeon,although they were hard to count with them plastered everywhere. there was also about 30c pintail

after logging:

6 blackwit

100c golden plover

4000c lapwing

500c dunlin

8 sanderling

3 knot

4 ruff

42 white fronts

2 peregrine

large amounts of ducks

we them moved to the holden tower where we saw the huge lapwing flock closer,another 50 golden plover were here, and 2 BARWIT were pointed out to me at a huge distance on the river,another peregrine,a flock of about 50 greylags,140 barnicle and the 42 distant white fronts again,5 pintail flew towards the zeiss area,we didnt spend too much time here as the top floor of the hide was jam packed and we gave up our seats.

then on to the rushy pen,where my lifer 'will' be.

and yes they were there. 18 BEWICK'S SWANS gave good views but the pintails were superb giving amazing views.n the rushy hide(the rickety wooden one not the nice headted one) i watched for 45 mins as about 10 male pintails displayed to a female right in front of the hide,and they were wild

(pintail doing amazing duck)

(bewick's)

(wigeon)

and to say there was a lot of pochards was an understatement

(loads of pochard)
we spent the next 1 1/2 hours looking into the rushy pen as there is just so much to look at and take in. a little egret stood motionless in a tree at the back of the pen

and a few of other things in the rushy pen:

some people would be dissapointed that all the raretys had cleared out,but you know what i go against them,without the raretys this was a great day,with 79 species logged at slimbridge(and 81 for day) and about 9000 birds seen,

so,was it worth the trip.

HELL YEAH

MB