Lower Derwent Valley Birding

Spent the afternoon birding at North Duffield Carrs and Ings, and Bubwith Ings with James, though I had an hour or so down there before he arrived.

North Duffield Ings and Bubwith Ings were both stacked out with waders and wildfowl.  Highlights included: 4 Black-tailed Godwit, 50 Ruff, 400 Dunlin, 800 Golden Plover, 1500 Lapwing, 20 Redshank, 1 Oystercatcher, 10 Curlew, 2 Snipe. There was a good 30+ Whooper Swan, Mute Swan and Black Swan on the water with Greylag, Canada and 2 Egyptian Geese also present. 162 Pochard were on Bubwith Ings (though probably under-estimate as many were under trees), plenty of the usual suspects: Pintail, Wigeon, Teal, Tufted Duck, Mallard, Gadwall.

Unsurprisingly the abundance of birds was attractive to raptors. I had 4 Buzzard, 2 Kestrel (one below), Sparrowhawk and a 1st winter/female Merlin.

Derwent Cottage Farm had hardly any swans today: about 8, hardly worth stopping... glad we checked them though as two of them were the Bewick's Swans!! The field was rammed with Golden Plover (1000+) and Lapwing (800) along with 100 Dunlin and a few Ruff. Also a small flock (c25 Linnet).

North Duffield Carrs was fairly quiet though drake Greater Scaup, Great-crested Grebe, 3 Little Grebe, 3 Goldeneye, 10 Curlew,were nice, along with the regulars: Mute Swan, Teal, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Pochard, Black-headed and Common Gulls, Coot and Moorhen etc.

The morning dog walk was fairly quiet today, no Barn Owls today, though 2 and 1 in the last couple of days were nice. Today it was mainly Bullfinch, Tree Sparrow and Yellowhammer.

On Thursday I had a nice garden visitor, Song Thrush (photo below).

Fantastic Day in LDV

Had a great day birding round the Lower Derwent Valley with Lewis (off the RSPB Scotland) today.  Highlights included:

North Duffield/Bubwith/Aughton Area:

• Barnacle Goose (3 flocks: 11, 53 and 15)
• Bewick's Swan (2)
• Whooper Swan (80+)
• Greater Scaup (1 drake) - pics below
• Egyptian Goose (2)
• Black-tailed Godwit (2)
• Great Spotted Woodpecker (3 males drumming)
• Skylark - lots singing
• Sparrowhawk (3)
• Curlew (11+)
• Dunlin (200+)
• Lapwing (c2000)
• Golden Plover (600+)
• Great Crested Grebe (1)
• Little Grebe (2)
• Marsh Tit (2)

Thorganby/Wheldrake Area:

• Glaucous Gulls (2 1st winters)
• Greater Scaup (1 drake)
• Barn Owl (2) - pics below
• Peregrine (1 adult male)
• Black-tailed Godwit (2) - same 2 as at North Duffield Ings???
• Curlew (26)
• Lawing (c1500)

Plenty of other 'nice' birds around: Bullfinch, Yellowhammer, Siskin, Lesser Redpoll, Tree Sparrow, Grey Partridge etc etc...

Barn Owl © Andy Walker 2013

Barn Owl © Andy Walker 2013

Barn Owl © Andy Walker 2013

Barnacle Goose (flock of 53)

Barnacle Goose (part of the flock)

Scaup (Phone-scoped)

Lewis enjoying the Bewick's Swan

Me at Castle Howard at dusk (photo Lewis Davies)

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) 

Skylark Surprise: Major Movement in LDV

Did some more local birding today though had a later start than planned. Didn't travel far but still had some decent birds and decent counts of these too.

First stop was the Geoff Smith Hide in the hope that a nice drake Smew had dropped in. It hadn't.  The drake Greater Scaup was still present, but was fast asleep. There was tonnes of wildfowl present but most of it was spread all over the water so not really possible to count. I did notice Great Crested Grebe was still present, along with plenty of Whooper Swan, Pintail, Pochard, Goldeneye, Tufted Duck, Shoveler, Gadwall and Mallard. There was a couple of Ruff, Redshank, Lapwing and Golden Plover along the riverbank, along with 2 Reed Bunting and several Fieldfare.

Rather unhelpfully a couple of people walked along the riverbank (beyond where the public access stops) and flushed (high) hundreds of birds off the river which all flew onto the reserve, making counting anything totally impossible.

Next stop was Bubwith Bridge. North Duffield Ings was frozen over, as was the majority of Bubwith Ings. The small pool that wasn't frozen contained Pintail, Shelduck, Wigeon and Teal. However it was the river here that held the main attraction; Common Snipe. 62 of them, some feeding, some roosting. There was also about 50 Lapwing and 6 Redshank here (and another 100 Teal).  Scanning through the Snipe I picked up about 12 Skylark, 3 Meadow Pipit, 10 Tree Sparrow, 6 Reed Bunting and 30+ Fieldfare.

Next stop was Intake Lane (just behind Bubwith Village).  Ollie and Chris had tipped me off that there was a large flock of passerines here but they hadn't got time to check them out properly. so I went to explore. It was pretty remarkable! The field was stacked out with Skylark. I counted 420 feeding in the stubble, then just as I was leaving another flock of at least 250 flew in and joined them! A flock of 670 Skylark is a pretty remarkable sight! Also here was at least 30 Corn Bunting, 38 Reed Bunting, 14 Yellowhammer, 15 Tree Sparrow and 5 Meadow Pipit.

Driving towards Ellerton I found a flock of 177 Linnet feeding in a cover-crop (really shows the benefit of these schemes) in with this flock was at least 2 Brambling, 17 Reed Bunting, 30 Chaffinch, 3 Yellowhammer, 2 Corn Bunting, 18 Tree Sparrow and 30 Chaffinch. Another 25 Skylark flew over.

A short drive later and I located another flock of Skylark, this time 144 that showed to really close range. Unfortunately I couldn't pick out anything more unusual amongst them! Something flushed this flock and as I looked up a cracking juvenile male Peregrine flew low overhead. It wasn't wanting Skylark for tea, I expect it had its mind set on Woodpigeon supper! A Barn Owl was the last treat of the day.

So a good selection of farmland birds with the following totals:

• Skylark: 851
• Linnet: 177
• Reed Bunting: 63
• Corn Bunting: 32
• Yellowhammer: 17
• Tree Sparrow: 43

I know Ollie and Chris recorded quite a few flocks of Skylarks at other locations today (not sure of final numbers yet), but it is pretty obvious that there has been a large hard-weather movement over the weekend, as these birds were certainly not present yesterday and given more time today I'm confident we could have found a lot more!

Smart Brambling!

More Aythya Action North Duffield

Spent the majority of the day at North Duffield Carrs today. Woke to find an inch or so of snow on the deck and had an enjoyable walk with the dogs noting fox, badger, roe deer, rabbit, pheasant and a host of small bird prints in the fresh snow. The hedges were busy with Fieldfare and a flock of 5 or 6 Bullfinch and a couple of Reed Bunting were noted.

Down at the hide I met up with Jono, Chris and Ollie to tales of Cetti's Warblers and Sea-Eagles that I'd missed! The Aythya hybrid/Lesser Scaup thing came close at one time but I only saw it from behind and didn't see the bill clearly enough, the bird did do one wing flap as it was facing away from us, this did look pretty good for Lesser Scaup! (see part 1 of the story so far here, part 2 here).

Chris and Ollie left and Jono picked out another Aythya asleep with a group of distant Pochard, this immediately looked like a much larger bird than the other Aythya and (after making sure we could see the both of them at the same time!) were happy there was definitely two Aythyas present - once this bird put its head up it was clear it was a Greater Scaup (looked like the bird I had last Friday).

Over the course of the day I could only manage a couple of record shots on my phone of the two birds above, though neither are very good as the birds were still distant but you can kind-of make out the differences.

Greater Scaup (phone-scoped)

Aythya Hybrid/Lesser Scaup bird (phone-scoped)

Not long after Ollie and Chris had left the hide we got some phone calls from them informing us that they'd got some Waxwing in the car park. We went straight round (a good job we did too as they were flushed by a truck, flew off and weren't seen again!!). Again, just the following record shots.

Waxwing record shot

Three of the Waxwing

Other wildfowl recorded down there today included Great Crested Grebe (my first here this winter), Little Grebe, 300+ Tufted Duck, 100 Pochard, 100 Pintail, 5000+ Teal/Wigeon, 68 Whooper Swans, 200 Mallard, 5 Shoveler, 25 Goldeneye, 5 Gadwall, 5 Shelduck, 40 Mute Swan, 30 Coot, 6 Moorhen and as dusk approached 'the' pair of Bewick's Swans flew in.

Waders included Lapwing, Ruff, Golden Plover, Redshank, Dunlin and Snipe.  Raptors included Barn Owl, Marsh Harrier, Kestrel and 2 Buzzard. There was quite a few Meadow Pipit, Fieldfare, Redwing, Pied Wagtail and Robin about and several Long-tailed Tit visited the feeders.

The Robin was nice and obliging, allowing me to sort out next years Christmas card!

Robin

Robin

Robin

Long-tailed Tit

More Ducks..

Morning dog walk produced an interesting mixed finch flock: 1 Brambling, 1 Lesser Redpoll, 3 Greenfinch, 2 Goldfinch and 12 Chaffinch. Not a lot else though.

I drove up to the Rufforth area to look for gulls, but they were more flighty than yesterday due to air-traffic and a nearby Buzzard that kept spooking them. Just the usual suspects today.

I then decided to head over to Castle Howard to see what was about, it was fairly busy with wildfowl, highlight here was a pair of Mandarin (a record shot of the distant pair below - male on the bank, female on the water). They were in more-or-less exactly the same spot that I had them here in the summer! There was also a Scaup present, showing about 500 m closer than the one I'd seen at North Duffield on Friday morning! Some pictures of this bird below.

Other wildfowl noted included: 14 Goosander, Pintail, Goldeneye, Tufted Duck, Pochard, Wigeon, Teal, Mallard, Gadwall, Greylag and Canada Geese, Mute Swan and Little Grebe (photo below). Don't remember any passerines of note!

Mandarin pair (phone-scoped looking into the sun)

Scaup

Scaup

Scaup

Scaup

Little Grebe

A great day & some good raptors

Early morning dog walk resulted in two very vocal Little Owl.  I was surveying this afternoon so this morning I popped into a couple of local spots finding a nice drake Scaup, Willow Tit, Marsh Tit and a range of common birds, including a very confiding Robin.

This afternoons highlights included a cracking Hen Harrier, several Red Kites and a nice flock (c50) Lesser Redpoll, though the real highlight (rarity wise) was probably the Red-breasted Merganser that flew through the site I was working at.

Hen Harrier

Hen Harrier

Hen Harrier

Red Kite

Red Kite

Red Kite

Red Kite

Possibly the worst shot of a Scaup... (phone-scoped)

Stonechat (phone-scoped)

Robin (phone only!)

Waxwing in my Garden!

Well almost, had one fly over this morning just after I'd got back from walking the dogs, didn't have time to look to see if it went down in the village and it was dark when I got back from work, I hate this time of year!

Here's another from yesterday just to prove there was 8 Waxwing at Escrick and I wasn't seeing things!

The Magnificent Seven (and an interloper!)

Tim found a different Scaup at North Duffield this afternoon, oh to be a student again!

North Duffield: Sunday Special

Loads more rain here overnight (with loads more forecast tonight), lots of standing water in the fields around here now with many of the field-drains near to bursting point.  I popped over to North Duffield this afternoon for a short while to see how things were shaping up down there and not surprisingly the water levels were much higher than yesterday.

The area preferred by the Bittern over the last couple of weeks is now largely underwater. A few areas around the edge of the pool still seem suitable for it to forage but you'd have to imagine that the amount of water in the area has pushed it elsewhere.

The change in water levels has seen a change in species present too.  Wigeon, Teal, Pintail, Gadwall and Mallard numbers were dramatically down (or absent) but numbers of Tufted Duck and Pochard were up (or just easier to see due to the lack of the above!) - I think new birds in. Also present today was between 4 and 6 Goldeneye.  There was also a Little Grebe present - first one I've seen here since earlier in the year (late winter/early spring) I think.

Also, the Scaup that has been present on the reserve for at least 3 weeks was again showing on the river, was here on Thursday and yesterday in more-or-less the same place! (record shot off phone, in near darkness below)

Scaup (phone-scoped in near darkness)

The Barn Owls were again showing well, 2 distant and 2 much closer in.

There was a flock of at least 20 Ruff and 3 Dunlin roosting on a raised bank and several dozen Lapwing about. Swan and Geese numbers were down on the reserve, but there was plenty of distant geese over towards Aughton.