Tuesday 27 January 2009

Duck Tales

Today a wander around a secret site in Scotland with Ade produced little of excitement at first, a few hundred Curlew, Lapwing, Redshank and Oystercatcher but little else, until a river tidal wave (or whatever they are called) came in and pushed in lots of interesting waterfowl, e.g. 5 Goosander, a male Red-breasted Merganser then a raft of Mallard (20), Wigeon (190), Teal (50), Goldeneye (4), Shoveller (1), Great-crested Grebe (1) and something slightly more interesting, a shedload of Pintail, 179 in total!!!! I'm pretty sure I've never had that many Pintail together before so was fairly pleased with that. Interestingly this was exactly the same place and tidal occurrence that I witnessed last year which brought almost 250 Greater Scaup up the river past me!!! In addition there was a nice big flock of Whooper Swans jobbing around, approximately 200 of them, another good count! Add to that all the Pinkies, Shelduck and 200+ Teal, 40 Wigeon and 20 Mallard on a little pond and it was certainly an interesting wildfowl day, just a shame it didn't stop drizzling all day. Oh just remembered, a Raven flying over calling was a nice suprise, but no year ticks.

A walk along a secret river did not produce the hoped-for otter, do they even exist???

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