FECKING MANDARINS!!!!

10/12/10 + 11/12/10
will combine both these days as they are both at the same site.
on the 10th we went looking for waxwings but drew a blank so a very last minuite decision to head top TRIMPLEY RES. was in order.
we parked at the top car park, where imidiatly 2 CROSSBILL flew over going NW, a walk to the res added 3 BRAMBLING over and the usual birds that are in eymore wood, goldcrest, tit flocks etc...
the bottom lake was completly frozen so we headed immidiatly up to the top lake, which was 20% frozen, but had a nice array of duck species (for here!!!), A drake GADWALL, and 3 WIGEON (1 drk, 2 fem) were unusual as was a very high count of 52 tufted duck, as usual a post roost flock of gulls were down and among them was a stunning adult YELLOW LEGGED GULL (i cant get rid of them this year).
a buzzard was on its kill nearby:


we were waking around the edge looking at the river when i picked up a flock of about 30c MANDARIN. i got my scope out and had a look, but no sooner that i had done this than a huge flock of mandarins (around 100 birds) were flying over my head, doing so fof about 5 mins before landing over the river in front of me. a few more flocks of smaller sizes dropped in and soon i was counting through them, a total of 192 MANDARIN were on the ice on the river and no matter how amazing that flock sounds, there was also a TOTAL ALBINO bird sitting among them, a stunning looking creature but as you can see from the buzzard video above it was very dark by now and i just couldnt get my camera to work, however we agreed to visit again the next day to try for videos and photo's.
another quick check of the main lake had a flock of 108 GOOSANDER floating around, adding to this the amount of flyovers (easilly 80+) put a huge total but as this could involve a degree of duplication i only decided to put the number down as the grounded birds...

11/12/10
as i said we came back the next day, but 3 hours of searching didnt produce the albino mandarin and the total number of mandarins had dropped to a still mindnumming 173 birds, but saying that all bird mumbers had dropped, goosanders were down to only a 50c figure and Tufties were even worse at only 16 birds, the Ad YELLOW LEGGED GULL was again presant but only briefy on the still frozen small pool.
3 Marsh tits were in the woods including a bird with an odd pink growth above its eye near the bottom car park. as you would imagine i took a few videos:
in one of the mandarin vids there is 68 birds:

MB