Here and There

Friday 6th March 2009

A day off work to spend the day birding started at Slimbridge WWT at 8:15am. Highlights here included a first-winter Glaucous Gull on the estuary at 9:00am seen distantly from the Holden Tower, two wild Greylag Geese, a Brent Goose and a Peregrine were on the edge of the Dumbles while two Oystercatchers were near the tower; the first-winter male American Wigeon was showing from Lathbury Hide and male and female Kingfishers were active around the nest hole at South Finger (above) where a Cetti's Warbler was also heard; two Oystercatchers were copulating at South Lake, where the Egyptian Goose was dozing on the shingle causeway; 323 White-fronted Geese came on to the Tack Piece early afternoon to drink and rest (below); just eight Bewick's Swans were in the Rushy Pen.

I then headed to Cirencester to see the Great Grey Shrike again, and this time got much better views (below).
On to Driffield, and after a failed attempt earlier in the year I managed to locate two Grey Partridges (below) in a field (GR SU066992) with c400 Fieldfares (next photo below) with a small proportion of Redwings.


I rounded off the day by checking the river at Longney and Priding, but despite the large number of gulls there was nothing out of the ordinary. After going through several hundred Larus sp. I started seeing white spots before the eyes and with hypothermia setting in decided to call it a day at 4:00pm!

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