Thursday January 19

I've been saving the best till last. This morning, in grey misty conditions (again) I made my first visit to what is surely the jewel in the crown within my patch boundary. I refer to Arrow Valley Lake.

Looking down the lake from the north-east corner

Compared to my Morton Bagot patch it has a lot going for it. Deep water for a start, so it should be good for gulls, possibly terns, grebes, and diving ducks. It even has a small heronry. On the other hand it will be useless for waders, having no shoreline and lots of coarse fishermen, and loads of people walking dogs, jogging, and potentially mugging innocent birders (hopefully not). It even has a cafe.

The cafe

So a boost for my Patchwork Challenge year-list was expected today.

First up were the easy wildfowl, 17 Mute Swans, 20 Coot, 13 Canada Geese, and 49 Mallard. Gulls were hard to ignore, the site contained at least 100 Black-headed Gulls, a few Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and a second winter Herring Gull. A Tufted Duck joined the birds which were obviously used to being fed on bread.

In front of the cafe I could see a Greylag Goose, and further away three Great Crested Grebes, a Goosander, and three Cormorants. The feeders in front of the cafe had attracted two Greenfinches, strangely absent from the streets around our house this winter, and the stroll along the west side added three Moorhens and a Grey Heron.

More Goosanders flew in, two drakes just kept going, but a redhead joined the one already present. I was determined to get some sort of photograph of the species, which is very scarce at Morton Bagot.

Goosander - possibly an immature drake

Great Crested Grebe

Returning along the east side I spotted a Kingfisher sitting on the branch of a tree at the edge of the heronry island. Too distant for a shot. However, a little further on I was surprised to see it again, and this time much closer, though annoyingly a bit obscured. Good enough though.

Kingfisher

 A Sparrowhawk flew by, and nine Redwings were perched in trees at the carpark. I had recorded 37 species on a visit with very little effort invested in it.  Very satisfactory.

Postscript: Just discovered that yesterday a Glaucous Gull was present here. Had I known about it I could have seen it because due to a bout of ill health suffered by Lyn (she appears to have recovered today) I was late into work. I even year-ticked Great Spotted Woodpecker on the way to the paper shop.

Very unsatisfactory.