Penduline Tit-less Darts Farm, Friday February 13th 2015

With 3 (+?) penduline tits wintering in the Topsham area I thought it about time to go and have a look for them. They have been mobile and erratically sighted at Exminster Marsh, Bowling Green Marsh, Topsham Rec.and Darts Farm with the latter site being the easiest and most reliable place to see them. They had been showing well at Darts Farm in the last few days and so I was quite hopeful but the days date should have been a clue - Friday 13th - and on arriving at the hide at 12:30 I was informed that they had flown off at about 11am - bugger! History would suggest that they wouldn' t return again that day and indeed they didn't - never mind, I'll have to try again.

I did manage to see a few nice birds though. A distant kingfisher was my first of the year and a pair of stonechat,  a chiffchaff, an immature male reed bunting and a water rail kept me occupied as I scanned across the reeds and bull rushes where the penduline tits usually feed. A lone brent goose flew over and a shelduck and male shoveler were feeding on the water with teal, wigeon and mallard. 4 black tailed godwit flew around the fields with curlews and a meadow pipit fed in the grass right in front of the hide.

Water Rail, Darts Farm

After lunch at the Darts Farm cafe I walked over to Bowling Green Marsh, seeing a male sparrowhawk hunting low over the drainage channels criss-crossing the fields. It flew slowly, occasionally stalling and dropping to the ground and sometimes briefly hovering. It flushed a snipe which quickly flew off and away, presumably what it was hunting for - I've seen a sparrowhawk hunting snipe in this way before at Marazion Marsh in Cornwall.

At Bowling Green Marsh the usual birds were on display at a low tide. There were more shovelers than on my last visit in January and also a few pintails. 10 greylag geese and a grey heron were also seen and a flyover peregrine spooked all the birds as it passed by. 2 water rails were feeding in the grassy field by the footpath leading up to the viewing platform and in the fading light I found 3 avocets feeding amongst the redshank, dunlin and grey plover on the mudflats.

Strangest bird was what appeared to be a gadwall x wigeon hybrid feeding on the Marsh  - it upended in the water like a gadwall but had a blue-grey bill, male wigeon-like scapulars, a white vent area and a very schizophrenic appearance, looking wigeon like at times but then very gadwall like. Maybe it was an aberrant juvenile male wigeon? I took a few poor photos in the fading light but it would be interesting to get a better view of the bird in brighter conditions.

 Wigeon x Gadwall?, Bowling Green Marsh

Gadwall x Wigeon?

Wigeon x Gadwall?