Rutland Water 13th May 2016

Rutland Water 13th May 2016

To break up our journey back home we decided to stay overnight at the Barnsdale Lodge Hotel at Rutland Water and this would give us a chance to look at the Ospreys again. We had seen them at the start of our holiday so it seemed appropriate to have a go at them again and Rutland was an ideal half way home for us. The weather was rather different this time, being much cooler and more windy and overcast, and it looked like there might have been quite a bit of rain since we were last here.

We stopped at the Lyndon centre first and took the woodland walk. We got off to a rather inauspicious start as I was nearly involved in an unpleasant encounter with a driver reversing in the car park. Despite there being plenty of room, this driver had not bothered to look into his mirror and reversed so far out of his parking slot, whilst I was sorting out my kit in the boot of our car, the he nearly crushed my legs as I got trapped between his car and ours. Thanks to Anne I wasn’t hurt but it was inches away from crushed knee caps and broken legs. The driver seemed entirely unaware of what happened until I remonstrated with him and he got out of the car and then realised how close he hd been to a real disaster – for him and me.

But, back to the birding. Perhaps it was because I was used to hearing so many birds in Norfolk that it felt a little underwhelming but we hadn’t done this walk before and we did get Blackcap, Wren, Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff. We returned to the visitor centre but instead of taking the path in the other direction to see Osprey, we decided to go over to Egleton to see the nest that we had had such brilliant views of two mating Osprey before.

This turned out to be a bad decision, Osprey wise, because when we got round to Egleton we were told that the Ospreys had abandoned that nest be vase it had been trashed by Egyptian Geese ! I had never heard of this behaviour before but apparently  it happens and when we got round to the Sandpiper hide we discovered it was true because inside the Osprey, nest we saw a head popping out out from above the mound of twigs and it appeared to be the head of an Egyptian Goose!

Our trip wasn’t entirely disappointing as we notched up bird species number 118 of our holiday – four Black Terns (a “life tick”) among the Common Terns. One occasionally landed on one of the rafts but usually they were mingled in with the Commons. This was a nice bonus and since we had seen Ospreys at the start of our holiday, we were pretty happy.

We got some other ducks including Gadwall, Pochard, Wigeon, Shelduck, Tufted etc. There was a pair of Great – crested Grebes and a lot of swans and some Geese. We also got Bullfinch, Cetti’s Warbler, Song Thrush and the sky was full of Swifts and Sand Martins, the latter from the big Sand Martin bank they have constructed.

All in all a very satisfactory short visit on our way home. Tomorrow we will take a walk in the Hambleton woods before driving home. Any chance of getting to 120 species for the holiday ? We will have to see.

Life Tick : Black Tern

Bird Sightings : 14th May Rutland Water