Swans and Stints at the Years End

After a crappy couple of weeks at work including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I felt in need of a Christmas treat and decided a visit to the WWT reserve at Slimbridge was in order. I had a look at the train times and prices and almost changed my mind - £78 return for the train ticket plus taxis and entrance fee on top! After I had gotten over the shock I had a look on the Tickety Split website and managed to whittle down the cost of the train fare to £38.50 travelling on exactly the same trains but having to buy 3 separate tickets - Plymouth to Taunton return, Taunton to Bristol return and Bristol to Cam and Dursley return - how utterly ridiculous.

The journey to Slimbridge went seamlessly with no hitches and I arrived at the ticket office at Slimbridge at 10:30am. It was a cloudy and breezy day with occasional sunny spells but it wasn't too cold and I decided to start off at the Rushy Pen where I immediately found a few Bewick's swans loafing around including 2 juveniles.

Bewick's Swans, Rushy Pen

Onwards towards the Holden Tower and from the hides the Tack Piece was well flooded and covered in birds - wigeon, teal, pintail, shoveler, mallard, mute swan, Bewick's swan, curlew, lapwing, golden plover, redshank, tufted duck, dunlin, Canada goose, greylag goose and shelduck all busily feeding away until a peregrine dashed in like a rocket putting everything up. Eventually the birds resettled and I managed to find 7 ruff, 16 white fronted geese and 2 little stints amongst the flocks with a distant view of a common crane feeding in fields behind a hedge - I was very pleased to see the little stints after missing out in the autumn and it was strange to see them in December but there have often been wintering birds at Slimbridge in recent years (I saw 2 birds here in January 2015).

Ruff with Redshank, Lapwing and Shelduck, Tack Piece

Little Stints with Curlew

Pintail

Pintail

Pintail

Greylag Goose with White Fronted Goose

Greylag Geese with White Fronted Goose

Greylag Geese with White Fronted Goose

Greylag Goose with White Fronted Goose

White Fronted Goose

White Fronted Goose

Greylag Geese with White Fronted Goose

Greylag Geese with White Fronted Goose

A look from the South Finger hides and Zeiss Hide added 2 buzzards overhead, 7 snipe roosting amongst the large number of lapwings and golden plovers out in the fields and a feeding flock of barnacle geese out on The Dumbles to the days list along with a pair of brown rats looking very well fed as they scavenged below the bird feeders in the bushes.

Before catching my taxi back to Cam and Dursley railway station I had a final look at the birds on the Rushy Pen before leaving and I enjoyed watching the Bewick's swans feeding and demonstrating with each including a ringed male bird that is 17 years old called By Brook.

Lapwing, Rushy Pen

Bewick's Swan

Shelduck

Bewick's Swan

Bewick's Swan and Coot

Bewick's Swans

Bewick's Swans

Bewick's Swan

Jackdaw

Teal

By Brook the Bewick's Swan

By Brook - WWT Data Screen

Unfortunately the return journey wasn't so smooth with my train from Cam and Dursley to Bristol being delayed. Annoyingly I watched the train I was meant to catch from Bristol to Plymouth whizz through Cam and Dursley station on its way to Bristol with my late train eventually arriving behind it instead of before it. I then had an hours wait at Bristol for the next train to Plymouth, most annoying as I could have spent another hour at Slimbridge but never mind, it had still been a great day out and my final year list total is now an impressive 208.

Waxwings by the A38, January 20th 2017

January 18th was a gorgeous and sunny day but we were committed to family issues including mother in law getting her biopsy and CT scan results and the subsequent bad medical news - this year is really starting to shape up as being worse than last year. At least my mate Mavis got out birding at Bowling Green Marsh today in the lovely light, she is waiting for a hip replacement but got out on a mobility scooter and has sent me a gorgeous photo of a lapwing.

Lapwing, Bowling Green Marsh, courtesy of Mavis

There have been quite a few reports of waxwings in Devon and Cornwall in the past week since my Plymstock dip on January 7th with birds reported in Saltash, Holsworthy, Exeter, Topsham and Dawlish Warren but the report of a small flock at Heathfield was the most interesting to me. Back in 2013 I saw 8 waxwings at Heathfield, my last waxwing sightings, but the surroundings were not ideal as they were feeding on haws, hips and apples on the central reservation of the A38 opposite a tile factory - noisy, smelly, constant disturbance and a little scary - but this was where the waxwings had decided to make their temporary home again.

David very kindly offered to drive me to Heathfield to have a look for them on January 20th and after parking up at nearby Stover we quickly found the birds in the roadside trees being watched by assorted birders. They gave their position away by the lovely trilling calls they were regularly giving and quite audible over the noisy rumblings of the busy traffic along the dual carriageway but were surprisingly easy to overlook perched amongst the tree top branches.

Waxwing!

Waxwing

Waxwing

They regularly flew from the trees to the central reservation to feed before returning back to the trees and gave some very nice views in less than ideal conditions although they were always on the move and were quite skittish at times, especially when a large and noisy juggernaut sped by. I managed to count a total of 11 birds as they were often spread out along the verge and it was very lovely to watch them although with all the berries around in Devon at the moment I don't know why they have picked such a noisy and disturbed spot to feed.

 Waxwings

 Waxwing

 Waxwing - lovely!

Waxwing

We had a walk around Stover Park which was much more peaceful on a sunny and crisp winters day with the lake being mostly frozen over and white frost remaining in patches on the vegetation where the sun hadn't yet reached. On the small patch of open water left on the lake and the canal there were 3 male and 4 female tufted duck and the same of pochard, plenty of mallards, 3 mute swan, a cormorant, moorhens, coot and a pair of mandarin duck.

Mandarin Duck

The lakeside path was closed in part for tree clearance but the tree top walkway was open and there were a pair of marsh tits ( one with a silver ring on its left leg) and a female bullfinch around the feeders with blue, great and coal tits and 6 very chunky looking grey squirrels feeding on the ground underneath them.

 Marsh Tit

Blue Tit

We then headed off to nearby Bovey Tracey for lunch at The Brookside Café which was as good as ever before driving home, I would have liked to have stayed out for longer but had to get back to get ready for a dreaded night shift. It had been a very nice trip out though, any day with waxwings in it is a good day, they are such strange looking birds that don't quite sit in the British winter landscape but always a joy to see (and hear).