Four Swans and a Blackberry...

I popped across to North Duffield at lunchtime to see if there was much doing. It was fairly quiet generally on the floods with one Great Crested Grebe all of note. However there was a (presumably new) drake Greater Scaup alone on the river. Still a good number of Pochard and Tufted Duck about on Bubwith Ings, but either too far away or under trees so I didn't try counting them.

I had a look at the fields next to the car park and came across 151 Greylag Geese, 2 Egyptian Geese (record shot below), several hundred Lapwing, 50+ Golden Plover, 3 Ruff but the highlight was getting the 2 Bewick's Swans in the same scope view as a herd of Whooper Swans, Mute Swans and a single Black Swan and managing to grab a record shot on my phone of them all together (below)! I wonder how many other times all these four have been photographed together?

The two (always distant) Egyptian Geese (phone-scoped)

Whooper, Bewick's, Black and Mute Swans all in the same view! (phone-scoped) 

Egyptians on the Patch

The day started off well, I found a smart Little Owl whilst out walking the dogs at dawn, though there wasn't much else about. As I was walking back into the garden a familiar, yet unfamiliar sight appeared in front of me, a Barn Owl! A garden first! I've heard them calling during the breeding season but this is the first time I've managed to get views of one! Also in the garden today were a couple of Fieldfare and Tree Sparrow.

At lunchtime I popped across to the Geoff Smith Hide at North Duffield Carrs for my sandwich. Natural England were busy working away on cleaning up some of the flood damage and installing a new bird-feeder set up which will be great once complete.

The reserve was stacked out with birds again, a large flock of geese feeding on the bank adjacent to Garganey Hide contained two cracking Egyptian Geese - presumably the pair of birds that were present on the pool at Wheldrake Ings earlier in the week (phone photo below).

The Aythya hybrid was still present amongst the thousands of duck though I didn't locate the Greater Scaup in my brief visit.  A few large gulls flew into the reserve to bathe, one of which looked fairly good for adult Yellow-legged Gull but time beat me!

Egyptian Goose record shot (phone-scoped)