Sunday 7 April 2013

Stodmarsh.........No Luck This Time.


Coot.

I had a couple of spare hours this morning and decided to head over to Stodmarsh and try and see the Common Crane and to cut a long story short i missed it by about 10 minutes , luckily i have seen one at Stodmarsh before but that was quite some time ago and it would have been great to have connected with this one , never mind that's birding .

Lovely coloured Lapwing.

I met Steve Ashton and Mike Gould in the Marsh hide and they said other than the Crane it was fairly quite , they decided to head of and try and relocate the Penduline Tit and i stayed just in case the Crane decided to come back .

Little Egret with long head plumes.

There were plenty of Common Snipe  and a scattering of Redshank amongst them , i saw 2 Sparrowhawks  and a single Marsh Harrier  , a Cettis Warbler was singing nearby but refused to show its self .

Teal.

I saw 3 Water Pipits feeding in the distance and another birder in the hide picked one out a little closer in summer plumage , these are really smart birds and worth the walk out to the Marsh hide on their own , sadly it was to far for a photo , after about an hour i decided to head back and heard up to 3 Chiffchaff and a single Green Woodpecker on my return journey plus i am fairly certain i saw a Small Tortiseshell on the path but it flew before i could get a good view of it  .