A.W.Birder: Always on the lookout for fine birds...: Buff-bellied Pipit & Cockney Spara

Monday 24 December 2012

Buff-bellied Pipit & Cockney Spara

Went down to London yesterday to look for the Buff-bellied Pipit at Queen Mother's Reservoir. An easy journey with not much bother. A Red Kite at the junction of the M1 and M25 wasn't the most helpful and proved a bit distracting but I didn't end up on the wrong side of town!

The site was easy to find and so I set off round the reservoir in the hope of finding the Pipit. It didn't take long to connect with it as it fed on the reservoir bank, showing down to about 1 foot! Staggering. It was surprisingly difficult to photograph as the light wasn't great, and the bird was very active as it was foraging often right below the wall and often came too close!!! But it was great to be able to finally catch up with this bird, one that I'd hoped to have caught up with/found on the Scillies this autumn.

I watched the bird for a good couple of hours and got a selection of photos, some of these below, will put some others up over the next couple of days.

Buff-bellied Pipit © Andy Walker

Prior to seeing the Pipit I had nice close-up views of a Long-tailed Duck that was within a flock of Tufted Duck. Several Red Kite soared overhead and the not-so-familiar, but instantly recognisable sound of three Ring-necked Parakeets rang out, and finally showed well as they were exploring some trees along the edge of the reservoir.

It was nice to catch up with a few familiar faces (James - blog here, and Nige - blog here), we even saw a big fancy castle thing...

Windsor Castle I gather.

The drive back produced a flock of about 35-40 Waxwing a mile south of the Watford Gap services, plenty of Kestrel, Buzzard and a couple more Red Kites. Oh and I did see a couple of Cockney Sparras.