Rediscovering the Joys of Birding
• Friday, February 22, 2008 - Staines Black-necked Grebes
After my series of misses on my recent Brighton trip I thought that I need to twitch a reasonably "sure thing" for my life list. After all it has been almost a month since my last tick and I was getting keen to make another. Staines reservoir had been attracting lots of interesting birds and earlier this week had seen a juvenile Great Northern Diver, some scaup, smew and several black-necked grebes. I thought that at least some of these birds should still be there if I were to make the drive down so I gave myself the day off (one of the perks of working freelance) and headed down to Staines which was about an hour's drive away.
The weather was comparatively mild with a light westerly wind though quite chilly on the exposed reservoir causeway. There were several other birders present but no one had seen the GN Diver so it looked like I'd drawn a blank there. I systematically worked my way along the reservoir and saw lots of the usual stuff: tufted ducks, goldeneye, black-headed and common gulls, coots, great crested grebes and finally my first black-necked grebes and very pretty they were too. They were quite close to the causeway so one could get a good view of them. Also seen on the reservoir were shoveler, widgeon, teal, gadwall, some mute swans, a flock of fieldfares, some meadow pipits, a flock of stock doves, a few cormorants and a lone female pochard.
Whilst I was there I got to chatting with a fellow birder who, when he found out that I was from Oxford, told me that he was born in the John Radcliff hospital there, the same one in which my three children were born. I am guessing that this chap was retired as he'd just been down to Norfolk for a few weeks for the geese flocks and had seen the Cley white-crowned sparrow. It must be an enjoyable way to spend one's retirement swanning around the country looking at birds. Personally, though, I am still some way off from that!
To finish off I nipped round the corner to my mother-in-laws who happens to live near by for a quick cup of tea before heading back up the motorway, pleased with an enjoyable few hours birding.
So only one of the four target birds actually made an appearance - the BN grebes have actually been consistently present for some time there so they were a pretty sure bet. Interestingly enough I'm not sure whether I've actually seen a scaup before! In my previous birding incarnation I'd seen a variety of water fowl but I can't actually remember whether scaup was one of them and my original life list is actually in the loft at present so I'm not sure whether a scaup would have been a tick or not. No doubt I'll see one again relatively soon so it should soon become academic as to whether I'd see it before.
One more tick for the year list as well:
092 Black-necked grebe (LIFER) |
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