GOOD OL' SLIMBRIDGE

no matter what anyone says, every time i visit here i enjoy my day, whether it be huge flocks of ducks and waders to bewick swans and pintail to all and out raretys, i have been 4 times now and every time i come away with something decent on the list, so heres how the day goes.......

1/1/10

ahh the first day of the decade, i kinda figured that the black redstart and glossy ibis in my own county would stay around for a bit so, i decided that a trip into gloucester would be my day plan,

finally got my dad out at something like 11am(not an early riser like me), all the way to slimbridge there were tons of buzzards(40c) so they wont be mentioned again, to the west of bredon hill there was a flock of lapwings(200c) and a few shakey bin's looks produced 20c golden plover, i was looking around for the canada flock by the river as a pink footed goose was seen there not long before, i only latched onto the flock as we just went by a bush so i couldent see if a pink foot was in there, from there almost every field we went past had a flock of lapwing in, at cheltnam a flock of 34 golden plover overflew the motorway as well as the lapwings, near stroud, 10 SKYLARK flew over and landed in a stubble field, also golden plover and lapwings here, another 50c lapwing flew over at frampton and a melaganistic(or however you spell it) buzzard was perched in a tree.

on arrival at slimbridge we headed towards the tack piece, as i know most birds concentrate here in the winter(didnt know the ruff's were on the south lake, BUGGER), a MASSIVE flock of WIGEON,TEAL AND PINTAIL grazed the tack piece with a few bewick swans at the back, and in the top corner near the sea wall, were the flock of WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE, 314 of them, a massive flock, highlight of the day, in every aspect, or was it?

the dunlins were also here a splended flock of 400 odd,and 7 redshanks, 9 snipe and a load of lapwing

(sorry videos still not uploading)

moveing onto the holden tower produced a 1st winter YELLOW LEGGED GULL(also an adult presant somewhere) which i found, and was confirmed by other birders, more scope views of the white fronted geese and a decent flock of redshank on the river, an imensly huge flock of loafting gulls were further up the river near the middle point hide, which consisted of about 4000 gulls which i find unbelievable, meadow pipits and skylarks on the dumbles, the barnacle geese, greylag geese, canada geese and some bewick's were out there but scanning of the flocks didnt produce the hope for, pink feet, bean or brent geese, not even the egyption goose(it also was on south lake)

from the knot hide we saw a flock of 100c golden plover wheeling over near the zeiss hide briefly

a bittern was seen at the zeiss hide but didnt show, but a male fox spent time on the frozen water(which i also pointed out), but before we got there a superb WILD male teal was showing well in the captive eider pen.

also while here we watched the passing of hundreds of greylag geese:

nothing much of note from the zeiss hide as it was frozen, but there was the fox(which i have videos of but blogger still isnt letting me upload them)

a cettis warbler flew across the reeds

a treecreeper was seen in the woodland by the zeiss hide, a kingfisher and 3 water rail was seen at the south finger hides.

we then headed over to the rushy pen and the bewick's swans were comming into roost:

4 GADWALL were nice to see amongst the hoards of teal,pintail,pochard,tufties,mallards and shelducks and to a lesser extent wigeon, overall i counted 243 bewick's swans in the rushy pen, my dad didnt want to stop the extra 30 mins untill the starling roost, so we headed home, but wait there's more................

just as we were joining the motorway i spotted something amazing 3 ROE DEER, my first ever confirmed sighting of this species(always never been confident enough for more than deer sp), they looked so huge, but after about 10 seconds we had passed the fields and i lot the deer to view, what a fititng end to a great day................

MB

year list-77

site list-72