Doxey Gadwall - End of Year Birding

 Hi everyone, hope you all had a nice Christmas, and are going to have a nice new year. I didn't plan this trip until yesterday, so consider it a nice end-of-year treat. If you remember, we went to Doxey Marshes in November and saw lots of new birds. This time, we didn't see quite as much as we did last time, but we did see some nice birds we have already seen which are quite rare, and another species of duck I had never seen before.

The first birds we saw were a great egret and a grey heron. 

Here is the heron:

Here is the great egret footage we got:

There was also a flock of roosting cormarants. 

There were lots of teal about, and even a kingfisher, but unfortunatley it was too fast to get footage of. This next video is of a pair of shoveler in the distance.

The two other people in the hide even pointed out a pintail. It was really far away and I probably wouldn't have seen it if they didn't tell me. If you remember, I saw my first flock of pintail in the last post at Sandbach Flashes.

There was a flock of gulls consisting of herring, black-headed and great-black-backed.

My favourite birds I saw today were another species of duck which I had seen for the first time. It was a pair of gadwalls, and this time It was me spotted them. The males are the greyer ones, and are one of the only male ducks which are as dull as the females. 

The final thing we saw in the hide was a flock of snipe.

After leaving the hide we walked over to the screen in the middle of a reedbed. There was a huge flock of lapwings flying over. 

Just as we were about to leave, I saw another pintail on my final scan through my binoculars. It was quite far away, but you can see it bobbing up and down.

That is all for today's post. I know I said this last time, but I do think this will be the last post of 2024 so have a happy new year and look out for my top ten favourite bits of footage from 2024. I have also put the camera trap out over Christmas and will pick it up next year. It is not in its usual spot -  I have decided to put it in the spot where we got the footage for the post 'badger banger' (click here to see that post).

Remember to leave a comment and thanks for reading. See you next year!

A South American Duck in the UK?

 *this is part two of two posts - go check out my last post at Sandbach Flashes SSI.

Hi everyone, we will continue from where we left off in the last post.

After recording the song birds we went over the road to another lake. The first bird to stand out was a beatiful curlew.

Not a great video but here is a shoveler from very far away:

A long-tailed tit:

We also got some cracking teal footage:

If you read the last post you would know that there was one species of duck that I was looking for. On their website the site had reported two ringed teals, a bird which definitely did not belong here seeing as they are usually found in South America. That means that there is one unhappy duck owner out there whose ringed teals have escaped. Two birders came over to the lake I was watching and said they were looking for the ringed teal. Almost instantly one of them found it through their scope (much better than anything I had). He let me have a look but I knew that my camera wouldn't be able to record it. They were also very hard to pick out in a big flock of wigeons. However, further down the road it turned out you got a much better view of them. And it turned out that there wasn't just two, there was actually three; one male and two females. 

Here is some of the footage I got - the male is the grey one in the middle with a brown back and on one of the videos you can see the two females to the side of him which are darker and have a pale patch on their faces.

Sorry, the videos are a little shaky; it was quite far away. This is the one with just the male.

Here is the one with the females as well.

Just as I was about to head back someone called me over as they had seen a pintail (another species of duck). This was the first time I had ever seen one before. A small flock of them were very far away so the the quality isn't great.

That's all for today's post. I wonder if ringed teal will ever become established in the UK just like mandarin ducks have? It would involve a few escapes but it could happen. I will try and get the camera trap out for Christmas and of course New Year. I can't promise Christmas but I am sure I will be able to get it out before the new year. Thank you for reading all my posts over 2024, and have a nice Christmas. Stay tuned for the post where we look back at my top ten favourite bits of footage from 2024 which should release on new year's day. Remember to leave a comment and thanks for reading!

Sandbach Flashes SSI

*This is part one of two posts, part two will be releasing tommorow.

Hi everyone, today I have been to a place not far from where I live ( somehow I only found out about it a week ago) called Sandbach Flashes SSI. It was a really successful trip and I managed to get some of my best footage yet of wigeons, teals, curlews and some songbirds. After looking on their website at recent sightings there was one that caught my eye - a ringed teal. Admittedly I had never heard of one and after doing some research I found out it was a South American duck. I still didn't have very high chances of seeing them so I didn't get my hopes up. The first thing I saw was a massive flock of lapwings. (There is no sound on some of my videos from when the other birders were talking).

Another bird which there was loads of were wigeons.

There was a big flock of wigeons, mixed in with some bigger shelducks and cormarants.

The next bird was probably the best-looking one of the day. It wasn't a South American duck; it was a much more common Asian species - the mandarin duck. I have had them on the blog before, but the male was going through an eclipse (where they lose their bright colour and look a bit more like females). This time it was a bright and colourful male.

A nice robin:

There was also some other songbirds on the feeders, including goldfinches, great tits, blue tits and even a greenfinch up a tree.

That is all for today's post - part two will be out tomorrow.

Remember to leave a comment and thanks for reading!