Birding Group Visit to Pennington Flash 11th September 2012

Birding Group Visit to Pennington Flash 11th September 2012

This was the first day of the new term for the birding group and there was quite a good attendance. The weather was very changeable and when we first arrived it started to rain and stayed that way on and off for the rest of the morning. Although there had been some good weather over the previous week, the several weeks of rain before that had taken its toll on the site and the water levels were generally very high and the path that runs down towards the canal was waterlogged and impassable. As a result we only visited some of the hides but, even then, there were some good sightings.

Before we even got going I was looking from the car park to see what was about and I got a good view of a pair of Grey Wagtails hovering over the water briefly before flying slowly along the edge of the water before settling down again. As we left the car park a pair of Dunnocks showed themselves.

He started at the Horrocks Hide where we could see lots of Cormorants and many more Mute Swans – possibly as many as forty. There were plenty of Tufted Ducks and a few Great-crested Grebes and I even thought I caught a glimpse of a female Scaup but I couldn’t be certain before it hid itself amongst foliage. Coots were, as usual, plentiful and there were some Moorhens. Perhaps the most remarkable thing was the high number of Snipe. Whilst we were there I saw at least 14 in a single bunch but apparently there were many more on site.

On the spits of land were lots of Lapwings and Black-headed Gulls. As we settled in with our scopes I spotted a single Pochard on the water and as we were scanning the edges of the land spits we found a Greenshank – our first for the year ! On a post was a most remarkable bird which I at first took to be an Egyptian Duck but on closer examination appeared more like a Turkey. We couldn’t figure out what is was.

We moved on to the New Hide where we added Gadwall and Shoveler to the list. There was also a Buzzard flying overhead in the distance. We spent a long time looking at a wader which was giving us id problems and we were considering Greenshank again but in the end the consensus was that it was a Knot and there had been one recorded on-site that day.

We were moving from hide to hide between rain showers and one of these meant that we dropped in on the Tom Edmonson hide but the water there was very high and the foliage around it very overgrown. However, as we were sitting there, one of our group had been outside the hide looking the opposite way through the blinds that overlook the body of water that normally only has hundreds of coots. Not this time, though. David called us out of the hide and we ended up watching the best Kingfisher display any of us had ever seen as a Kingfisher flew back and forth across the water, calling all the time, and occasionally stopping right in front of us to hover before plunging into the water. All this with brilliant sunlight falling exactly the right way to illuminate the bird without dazzling us. Even when we though we had seen all it was going to offer us, it returned and did the rounds again. When it appeared to have landed on a branch to digest something we turned around and were called back to the hide because, even with the rain pouring down by now, there were two more Kingfishers hunting over the water. Unfortunately I was too late to see these other two birds but felt that I had had by far the best Kingfisher experience to date, already so I was not too concerned !

We tried to walk further along the paths down towards the canal but all the paths that were on the lower level were flooded so we didn’t have much choice but to go backwards and then come back round to the Bunting Hide.

As usual, the bunting hide was good for lots of birds including a small number of rather pale looking Bullfinches. There were also Greenfinches, very many Chaffinches and Great, Blue, Coal and Willow Tit.s There was a single Robin and a couple of Nuthatches as well as Collared Doves and Magpies.

Even though we had not been able to visit all of the hides or the woodland parts we normally go to, we still had a pretty good morning. As the others left, we went back to the first hide and had another look but apart from some juvenile Starlings, I didn’t spot anything before I realised I was the only person left in the hide. I returned to the car and we headed off for a spot of lunch.

Bird Sightings : Pennington Flash