1ST TEST RUN

23/1/10
so now it was over to upton warren.
saw a flock of curlew in the A38 field on the way in so had a look at them, there was a flock of 18, every mark visible through the new scope.
had a quick check in the north moors, absolutly nothing, 3 reeds bunting perched on reed heads.

then down to the east hide, mat upton regular john belsey in the hide and we chatted, the usual species were presant, teal, pochard shoveler etc, but now they were in a whole new league, the images were so much better, brighter and sharper than my old scope, even while scanning the reeds at the northern end, it was sharp, the pochards were clearly defined and scopeing a drake teal was a dream, the fine vercumilation's standing out, a roosting flock of 8 snipe stood together in one scopeview showing their subtle beauty,
sure having a scope that can identify birds is one thing but to have a decent scope just increases the enjoyment you get from the pastime.
a female shelduck spent ages asleap on an island, but only awoke once and despite spending a lot of time scopeing her, she decided to wing-flap the only time i looked away,

after a bit we were left alone, and didnt see any more species than already mentioned, we packed away at 4:30, we walked up the path, a flock of redwing and a singe fieldfare fluttered along the bush, suddenly we noticed a raptor coming in from the north, GOSHAWK. a male goshawk flew quite low over the trees showing most of its jizz features, but the bird was slightly silouetted, the barred underwings could be seen though, it got lower and lower untill it seemed to drop into the education reserve. we quickly got the news out and then saw another birder, just up the causeway,
'did you see it'
'see what'
'the goshawk'
's**t' (variation of this last word quoted on birdfourum)
we quickly explained the bird had dropped into the ed reserve, and that he only missed it by 30 sec's'. he explained to us that he had been watching the bittern from the gap in the hedge to the west hide and then started coming over here, so we missed the bittern while packing up but got the goshawk. we got to the car park where we saw a pair of birders coming up from the west hide, we asked wheter they saw the goshawk but they too missed it, we told the story, with a lot of mentioning of the word 'unbelievable'. what a fitting end to a great day
MB